Glass T i Ss^ 

Book , K H , 




THE 



BIBLE HISTORY 



BY JOHN KITTO, D.D., F.S.A. 



Mttsfcaiti) toitlj lumtrous elciobutts aub Paps. 



LONDON : 

GEORGE EOUTLEDGE AND SONS, 
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE. 
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET. 
1867. 



THE 




A NEW EDITION. 



LONDON : 

R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
BREAD STREET HILL. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 
THE PATRIARCHS. 



CHAPTER 

I. First Inhabitants of Palestine 
II. Abraham 

III. Abraham and Isaac ' 

IV. Jacob... 



BOOK II. 

THE HEBREWS IN EGYPT AND THE WILDERNESS. 

I. Joseph 

II. The Bondage " ... ... 

HI. The Deliverance 

IV. Sinai 

V. The Wandering 



book in. 

JOSHUA AND THE JUDGES. 



I. The Conquest 
II. From Joshua to Gideon 
tS' Irom Gideon to Samson 
Eli and Samuel ... 



BOOK IV. 
THE KINGDOM. 

I. Saul ... 
II. David... 

III. Solomon ... " ' ' 

I V Israel, from 990 b.c. to 931 b c" 

V. JlJDAH, FROM 990 B.C. TO 929 B C " 

VI. Israel, from 931 b.c. to 895 b c 

V I. JUDAH, FROM 929 B.C. TO 725 B.C.' 

VIJJ. Israel, from 895 b.c. to 719 b c 

1A. JUDAH, FROM 725 B.C. TO 586 B c" 



BOOK V. 
THE REMNANT. 



I. The Captivity 

II. The Restoration 

III. From 420 b.c. to 163 b.c 

IV. I HE ASAMONEAN PRINCES 

V. TnE Romans... 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



iarci 

CHAPTER I. 
FIRST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 




The History of the Hebrew people, may be 
most conveniently commenced with the call 
of Abraham, which, according to Hales, took 
place in the year of the world 3258, after the 
deluge 1062 years, and 2153 years before the 
birth of Christ*. 

The ages which had passed since the de- 
luge, concurring with the still long duration 
of human life, had again replenished with 
people the regions around the original seats 
I of the^ human race. That great'event, the 
confusion of tongues, which occurred 600 
years after the deluge, must have greatly ac- 
celerated, and even compelled, more ener- 
getic movements than had previously taken 
place. 

The descendants of Shem appear to have 
extended themselves gradually over the re- 
gions east and north-east of the river Tigris • 
the children of Japhet spread themselves 
into Asia Minor, whence it was their ulti- 
mate destination to be impelled into Europe, 
and to fill the length and breadth of that 
continent. The posterity of Ham remained 
in chief possession of Mesopotamia ; they 
also formed settlements at the head of the 
Persian Gulf, in Arabia, and in Canaan; they 
established empires in Assyria and Egypt ; 
and, as their numbers multiplied, they ad- 
vanced into Ethiopia, and other remoter 
parts of the African peninsula. 

* See note at end of the chapter. 



The history of Japhet's race is a blank in 
the early accounts of the Scriptures ; and 
that of Shem's is little more. The sacred 
historian confines his notice to one family of 
Shem's descendants ; and the intercourse of 
that family with the races of Ham, is the 
circumstance which evolves far more infor- 
mation concerning their early history and 
condition than we possess concerning any of 
the other descendants of Noah. From all 
that history tells, they appear to have been 
the first authors of the arts of civilisation 
and social life. But, remembering the other 
races of which authentic history takes no 
occasion to speak, this need not be positively 
affirmed. That, however, very important 
advancements had, even in this remote a°-e 
been made by the posterity of Ham, appears 
very plainly in the early intercourse of the 
I Hebrew patriarchs with Egypt. 

A division of the posterity of Canaan, the 
youngest son of Ham, left the Arabian shores 
of the Red Sea, and settled in the country 
whose history we have undertaken to write ; 
and they gave to it the name of their father,' 
from whom also they are, collectively, called 
Canaanites. They manifestly were not very 
numerous at the time this history opens. 
They did not by any means fill the country, 
but lived dispersed, in detached and inde- 
pendent clans, and, contented with the use | 
of such lands around their towns as they 1 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book 



needed for their own subsistence, they be- 
held without jealousy powerful einirs, even 
of the race of Shem, establish themselves m 
the plains and feed their cattle in the va- 
cant pastures. The time for territorial con- 
tests had not yet come ; and probably the 
settled Canaanites regarded the presence of 
the Bedouin sheikhs as an advantage, re- 
lieving them from the need of attention to 
pastoral affairs by affording a ready market 
where they might obtain milk, butter, 
cheese, meat, and skins, in exchange for 
their surplus corn and other vegetable pro- 
duce ; and they appear to have been quite 
sensible of the advantages of an open traffic 
with the pastoral chiefs. 

It might be easy enough to work out a 
plausible and ingenious account of the social 
condition of the Canaanites at the time when 
Abraham came among them. But as this 
must be purely conjectural, or founded on 
circumstances which did not occur till four 
or five centuries later, during which it can- 
not be doubted that orreat changes took 



place in their civil and political state, w( 
shall avoid such a course, and confine our 
selves to the slight notices which may be 
cleaned from the history of Abraham, with 
the very few more which the histories of his 
son and grandson offer. 

Their language was the same as that oi 
Abraham and the other patriarchs, who at 
all times speak to them without the medium 
of an interpreter. This was also true ages 
after, whenever any communication took 
place between the descendants of Abraham 
and the Canaanites or the Phoenicians. 

They were divided into a number of small 
independent communities. Every town with 
a small surrounding district, and probably 
some dependent villages, appears to have 
been a sovereign state, acknowledging the 
control of no superior, but being in alliance 
with its neighbours for common objects, ihe 
vale of Siddiin alone, the area of which does 
not exceed that of one of our smallest coun- 
ties, is known to have contained five of such 
states. It appears to have been the plan, as 
the population increased, to establish new 
cities and new states on ground not pre- 
viously appropriated ; in which case the ten- 



dency to consolidate numerous small states 
into a few large ones would not, in ordinary 
circumstances, arise till the country was 
fully peopled. We may well be astonished 
at the prodigious number of small states 
which the Hebrews found in Palestine on 
their return from Egypt ; but we do not, 
with some, infer that they were equally nu- 
merous in the time of Abraham. On the 
contrary, it rather seems to us that, m the 
long interval, the towns and states went on 
increasing with the population. That towns 
and states were as numerous in choice locali- 
ties, such as the fertile vale of Siddim, in the 
time of Abraham as in that of Joshua, we 
can well understand ; but not so in the 
country at large. It seems also that the 
states, though fewer, were not larger at the 
former date than at the latter, the extent of 
ground which they divided being proportion- 
ably smaller. At both periods the states 
of the Canaanites suggest a comparison to 
our own boroughs, consisting of a town, 
with dependencies of fields, and perhaps 
villages. 

And the comparison perhaps holds further ; 
for the meleks or kings of those tiny king- 
doms do not appear to have been more than 
chief magistrates, or patriarchal chiefs, with 
very limited powers. The mayors of our bo- 
roughs have probably greater civil power 
than they had. Indeed, it has more than 
once occurred to us to doubt whether these 
meleks had any independent civil power and 
whether they were not regarded merely as 
the military commanders of the people m 
time of war, and at all times the agent of 
their public transactions with other states. , 
The real power, civil and political, of these | 
small states seems to have remained m the 
body of the adult male population, and prac- 
tically, it may seem, in the elder portion of 
it from that deference which was paid to 
seniority in those early times. When Simon 
and Levi, the sons of Jacob, proposed on cer- 
tain conditions an alliance with Hamor the 
Canaanitish prince of Shechem, the latter 
was well pleased with the proposal, but 
would not conclude on what answer to give 
until he had consulted the citizens m the 



The same tenor of conduct always ap- 



CHAP. I.J 



FIRST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 



pears when occasions arise. In some cases so 
little notice is taken of the melek, that it 
may almost be doubted whether particular 
states had any such functionary. A public 
transaction about a transfer of land with 
such " a mighty emir " as Abraham was well 
calculated to require the presence of any 
prince which the Hittites of Hebron might 
have had, but no one appears in the account 
of that transaction. Abraham bows to " the 
children of Heth ;" he addresses his propo- 
sals to them, and they reply to him. If the 
Hittites had a king, he was doubtless pre- 
sent ; and if so, the manner in which he was 
overlooked, or in which he is included with- 
out distinction as one of " the children of 
Heth," strikingly illustrates the position of 
the melek in these small communities. The 
only other alternative seems to be that the 
Hittites of Hebron had no king in the time 
of Abraham. 

All the states in the vale of Siddim had 
kings, and all we know of them is that they 
were the military leaders in war. From the 
answer of the king of Sodom to Abraham, 
waiving all claim to the goods which the 
patriarch had recovered from the Mesopota- 
mian spoilers, without any reference to the 
wishes of his people in this matter, we may 
infer that, as might be expected, the melek 
had higher powers in all warlike matters 
than were allowed to him in the affairs of 
peace. The only other act of a Canaanitish 
king which we meet with implies nothing in 
this respect. This was the act of Melchize- 
dek, the king of Salem, who brought refresh- 
ments to Abraham aod his party when he 
returned from the slaughter of the kings. 

The mention of this remarkable person 
leads us to observe that there is not in 
Scripture the least indication that the Ca- 
naanites were idolaters in the time of Abra- 
ham, or indeed at any time before the house 
of Israel went down into Egypt. The king 
of Salem is expressly declared to have been 
a priest of the Most High God ; and when- 
ever suitable occasion offers, it appears that 
the Canaanites knew and reverenced the 
God of their fathers. It is true that they 
knew not this God as Abraham knew him ; 
and it is more than likely that, with some 



exceptions, such as that of Melchizedek, they 
had sunk into that state of indifference, and 
of ignorance concerning God's characters and 
attributes, which was but a too suitable pre- 
paration for that actual idolatry into which 
they ultimately fell. But that there was 
any positive idolatry in the time of . Abra- 
ham, or before the patriarchs left the land, 
we see no reason to conclude. If we look at 
the remarkable case of the destruction of 
Sodom and the cities of the plain, we cannot 
fail . to observe that idolatry is nowhere 
alluded to as one of the crimes for which the 
inhabitants were punished. They were 
punished because they were " sinners before 
the Lord exceedingly," and because there 
were not among them any righteous or just 
men. What the character of their sins was 
we know. The repugnance of Isaac and Re- 
bekah to the marriage of their sons with 
Canaanitish women, has often been alleged 
as a proof that they were by that time be- 
come idolaters, even by many who allow that 
they were not such in the time of Abraham. 
But the cited case proves nothing whatever, 
and could only have been adduced from that 
ignorance of the manners of the East which 
is now in a course of removal. The ideas of 
the patriarchal emirs required that their 
sons should marry into their own families, 
and this would have been frustrated by mar- 
riage with Canaanites. If this argument for 
the idolatry of the Canaanites be applicable 
to the time of Isaac's latter days, it must be 
equally applicable to the time of Abraham, 
for he was as anxious as Isaac could be that 
his son should obtain a wife from the house 
of his fathers in Padan-aram. But this ar- 
gument is used by those who confess that 
the Canaanites were not idolaters in the 
days of Abraham. 

We have little information concerning the 
social condition, arts, and occupations of the 
Canaanites at this early date. That "the 
Canaanites by the sea," that is, the Phoeni- 
cians, had already taken to the sea, and car- 
ried on some traffic with the neighbouring 
coasts, is very likely, but more than we can 
affirm. But we know that the people of 
Canaan lived in walled towns, in the gates 
of which public business was transacted. 

b 2 



I — 

4 

They cultivated the ground ; they grew 
corn ; and, as they had wine, they must 
have cultivated the vine ; which they pro- 
bably did upon the sides of the hills, ter- 
raced for the purpose according to that 
fashion of vine culture which has always 
prevailed in that country. Some find in the 
Perizzites a body of Canaanitish pastors, 
moving about with their flocks and herds, 
without any fixed dwelling. But as all this 
is founded upon a doubtful etymology, we 
shall lay no stress upon it. Doubtless the 
Canaanites had cattle, and paid some atten- 
tion to pasturage ; but the presence, in their 
unappropriated lands, of pastoral chiefs like 
Abraham, who, by making it their sole pur- 
suit, enjoyed peculiar advantages in the rear- 
ing of cattle, and could offer the produce of 
their flocks and herds on very easy terms to 
the settled inhabitants, was likely to prevent 
the latter from being much engaged in pas- 
toral undertakings. Of their military cha- 
racter at this early period we know little, 
and that little is not much to their advan- 
tage. They were beaten in every one of the 
warlike transactions of this age which the 
Scriptures relate, or to which any allusion 
is made. Doubtless every adult male knew 
the use of arms, and was liable to be called 
upon to use them when any public occasion 
required. 

They had arrived to the use of silver as a 
medium of exchange, and that the silver was 
weighed in affairs of purchase and sale in- 
volves the use of the scale and balanced 
beam. In what form they exhibited the 
silver used for money we know not with any 
certainty ; they certainly had no coined 
money ; for even the Egyptians, who were 
far before the Canaanites in all the arts of 
civilisation, continued long after this to use 
circular bars, or rings, of silver for money ; 
and, most likely, the silver money of the Ca- 
naanites bore the same form. 

The description of the burying-ground 
which Abraham bought for 400 shekels of 
silver of Ephron the Hittite, may perhaps 
inform us concerning the sepulchres in which 
the Canaanites liked to bury their dead. It 
was a cave in a spot of ground well planted 
with trees. 



[book T. j 

I 

Seeing that there will hereafter be fre- 
quent occasion to mention by name the 
several tribes of Canaanites inhabiting the 
land, and that some of them are historically 
connected with the early history of the He- 
brews, it will conduce to the clearness of the 
ensuing narrative, if, in this place, these 
tribes be enumerated, and their several seats 
pointed out. 

While the whole of the nation, collectively, 
bore the name of Canaanites, as descended 
from Canaan, there are occasions in which 
the Scriptures apply the name in a special 
manner to a part of the whole. Thus in 
Exodus iii. 8, we read, "the place of the 
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amo- 
rites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, 
and the Jebusites ;". and so in other places, 
except that the Girgashites are sometimes 
also named. We know that there were many 
tribes not included in this list of names, and 
the question is, to which or to what portion 
of those unnamed, the name of Canaanites is 
here given. The question is thought a per- 
plexed one, and there appear some serious 
objections to all the explanations which we 
have seen. We therefore satisfy ourselves 
with the notion, that this is merely a method 
of summary statement to avoid the frequent 
repetition of a long list of names : that, first, 
" the Canaanites" are put for all those clans 
not intended to be particularly enumerated ; 
and then follow the names of those tribes 
which were best known to the Hebrews and 
of the most importance to them. This view 
is confirmed by our observing that the tribes 
not named, and which we, therefore, suppose 
to be included under the name of Canaanites, 
are precisely those most remote from the 
early Hebrews, and with whom they had the 
least to do. That they are in other texts 
described as situated " at the sea," corre- 
sponds with the same intimation. In a 
general sense it will, under this explanation, 
be found to embrace, primarily, those several 
branches of the posterity of Canaan which 
settled on the northern coast, and were, col- 
lectively, known in general history as the 
Phoenicians. The matter appears to have 
been thus understood by the Seventy ; for 
they render the Hebrew in Josh. v. 1, for 



THE BIBLE niSTORY, 



CHAP. I.] 



FIRST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 



" kings of the Canaanites (which were by the 
sea)," by " kings of the Phoenicians :" and 
many ages after, the names were inter- 
changeable ; for the woman whom one 
Evangelist (Matt. xv. 22) calls "a woman of 
Canaan," is called by another (Mark vii. 26), 
" a Syro-Phoenician woman." 

Whether the families of Canaan in mi- 
grating to the country to which they gave 
his name, were headed by his sons, from 
whom they took their own distinguishing 
names, or removed after their deaths, does 
not by any means appear. The question 
does not seem of much importance, except as 
it might help to fix the time of the first 
occupation of the country ; and we allude to 
it merely that no forms of expression which 
we may incidentally use, should be con- 
sidered to involve the expression of any 
opinion on the subject. There is, however, 
sufficient evidence that the Canaanites had 
been a good while settled in the land, and 
we are repeatedly assured in Scripture that 
the Hittite city of Hebron was founded seven 
years before Zoan in Egypt. 

The Hebrew patriarchs, during their so- 
journ in Canaan, never approached the 
borders of the Phoenicians, and, conse- 
quently, they are not mentioned in the his- 
tory, unless under the name of Canaanites. 
Indeed, we should not have been assured 
that the Phoenician tribes were descended 
fcom Canaan, were it not fur the genealogy 
in Gen. x., which gives us a list of his sons, 
and assures us that all their families settled 
in Canaan. In this list the name of Sidon 
occurs first, as that of Canaan's first-born 
son. He was the father of the Sidonians, 
the chief of the Phoenician tribes ; and the 
great, commercial, and very ancient city of 
Sidon, the mother of the still greater Tyre, 
was called after him. The list includes 
other names which cannot but be considered 
as those of families which, along with the 
Sidonians, history comprehends under the 
Phoenician name. Such are the Arkites, the 
Sinites, the Arvadites, and the Zemarites, 
whose territories seem to have extended 
along the coast, northward from the town 
and territory of Sidon. 

The ancient Phoenician city of Area pro- 



bably took its name from the Arkites, and, 
therefore, will serve to indicate their situa- 
tion. Area stood nearly midway between 
Tripoli and Tortosa, and about five miles 
from the sea, among the lower ranges of 
Lebanon, fronting the sea-board plain. Here, 
in a situation commanding a beautiful view 
over the plain, the sea, and the mountains, 
Burckhardt found ruins, which he supposes 
to be those of Area, consisting of large and 
extensive mounds, traces of ancient dwel- 
lings, blocks of hewn stone, remains of walls, 
and fragments of granite columns. To the 
north was a hill, apparently artificial, still 
bearing the name of Tel Arka, and on which 
the temple or the citadel probably stood Oh 
former times. 

In the parts adjoining was an ancient city 
bearing the name of Sin, and which, in con- 
nexion with other circumstances, may be 
thought to indicate the situation of the 
Sinites. This city had, so far back as the 
time of Jerome, long been ruined by war ; 
but the site on which it once stood still re- 
tained this ancient name. 

The Arvadites are said by Josephus to 
have occupied and given their name to the 
small island of Aradus, called Arpad and 
Arphad in the Scriptures *, and the inhabi- 
tants of which are by Ezekiel mentioned 
along with the Sidonians, as taking an active 
part in the maritime commerce of Tyre. 
This island, which is about one league from 
the shore, and not above a mile in circumfe- 
rence, ultimately became the port and chief 
town of this enterprising and prosperous sec- 
tion of the Phoenician people ; and there was 
a time when even Romans regarded with 
admiration its lofty houses, built with more 
stories than those of Rome, and its cisterns 
hewn in the rock. All this, except the cis- 
terns and some fragments of wall, has passed 
away ; but Arvad is still the seat of a town, 
and, being a mart of transit, its inhabitants 
are still all engaged in commerce. Though 
the island was the favourite seat of the peo- 
ple, as their wealth and peace were there 
safe from the wars and troubles of the con- 
tinent, and their shipping needed not to 
hazard the dangers of the coast, they were 

* 2 Kings xix. 13; Ezek. xxvii. 8. 



6 

by no means without possessions on the main- 
land, for their dominion along the shore ex- 
tended from Tortosa*, which lay opposite 
their island, northward to Jebilee. They 
were, therefore, the most northernly of the 
Phoenician people f. 

The Zemarites are mentioned next to the 
Arvadites, and, correspondingly, they are 
usually, and with sufficient reason, placed 
next to that people, southward, on the coast, 
where, twenty miles to the south of Antara- 
dus, and four miles to the north of Orthosia, 
close upon the shore, was a town called 
Zimyra, to the site of which the name of 
Zumrah is still given. 

^The Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, and Zema- 
rites, are scarcely mentioned historically in 
the Scriptures : and were it not for the tenth 
chapter of Genesis, it would be unknown to 
us that they claimed a common origin with 
the other inhabitants of Canaan. Indeed, 
their territory can scarcely be considered as 
within the limits of Canaan Proper ; and 
their distance, as well as their being ranked 
in the general Phoenician body, with which 
the relations of the Jews were neutral and 
sometimes amicable, secured them a happy 
exemption from that notice in the Sacred 
Records which would have resulted from 
such hostile acts as took place between the 
Jews and the other Canaanitish tribes. 

This much may at present suffice concern- 
ing the Phoenicians, whose historical im- 
portance is of later date than the times of 
which we now more particularly treat. 

Next to the Zemarites, the Hamathites 
are mentioned in the list through which we 
are passing ; and, on several accounts, we 
were disposed to include them in the pre- 
ceding statement as one of the Phoenician 
tribes ; but, as our information concerning 
the Phoenicians makes it difficult to regard 
them otherwise than as a people inhabiting 
the coast, which the Hamathites did not, it 
seems as well to notice them separately. 

Their situation is determined, without any 
difficulty, by that of the city of Hamath or 

* Also Tartous, anciently Antaradus. 

t Joseph. ' Antiq.' i. 6. 2. Strabo, * Geog.,' v. 15. Po- 
cocke, ii. 27. Volney, ii. 148. Buckingham's 'Arab 
Tribes,' 523. 



[book i 

Hamah, so called after them, and which 
after having borne the Greek name of Epi 
phania, imposed upon it by the Macedoniai 
kings of Syria, has now resumed its ancien 
name. It is situated sixty miles inland fron 
the Mediterranean, eastward from Antaradus 
and not less than 100 miles to the north o 
Damascus : it was, therefore, distant fron 
the country known to the patriarchs ; and 
although its territory appears to have reachee 
to some extent southward, it was not in 
volved in those wars which attended the con 
quest of Palestine by the Hebrew people 
Yet, although scarcely more noticed, histori 
cally, in Scripture than the kindred tribe; 
which have already passed under our notice 
it happens that the name of Hamath is o 
very frequent occurrence there. This is be 
cause the territory of the Hamathites lay or 
the extreme northern border of the Promisee 
Land, whence " the entering in of Hamath ' 
is often mentioned as a point to which th< 
extreme line of northern boundary was 
drawn. But this boundary appears to have 
only ceased to be nominal during the reign; 
of David and Solomon, whose dominion 
doubtless, extended to the borders of Hamah 
if it did not include a part or the whole oJ 
the Hamathite territory. 

Hamah is one of those few very ancient 
towns whicji still exist as places of some 
note. It is situated on both sides of the 
Orontes ; and is, for that country, a well- 
built and comfortable town, the population 
of which is estimated at 30,000. The town 
has still, in one sense, a territory, being the 
seat of a district government, which compre- 
hends 120 inhabited villages, and over 
seventy or eighty which have been aban- 
doned J. 

We have taken the names of the above 
tribes in the order which their relative situa- 
tions, in the north, rendered the most con- 
venient. The remainder we shall go through 
in the order in which the Scriptures enume- 
rate them. 

This brings us to the people called " the 
children of Heth " and the Hittites. They 
were settled in the southern hills about 

q: A larger account of Hamah is given in • The Pictoral 
Bible,' under Num. xiii. 21. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



SHECHEM. 




HEBRON 



CHAP. I.] 



FIRST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 



Hebron and Beersheba. The Hebrew patri- 
archs had their encampments much in that 
part of the country, and appear to have 
lived on good terms with their Hittite neigh- 
bours, by whom they were treated with re- 
spect and consideration. 

The Jebusites, who are more noted in 
later history than in that of the patriarchs, 
were seated among the hills to the north of 
those which the Hittites occupied. Their 
territory extended to and included the site 
of Jerusalem, of which, indeed, they appear 
to have been the founders ; but whether 
before or after the date at which this history 
commences, we have no means of knowing. 
But, in a later day, we find them there in 
a city which they called Jebus, from which 
it was not until the time of David that they 
were entirely expelled. That they were able 
to maintain their post so long in the very 
heart of a country which the Israelites had 
subdued, warrants the conclusion that they 
formed one of the most powerful of the Ca- 
naanitish clans*. 

The Amorites appear to have been the 
most powerful and widely spread of the 
Canaanitish nations. The prophet Amos 
poetically describes the strength and power 
of the Amorite, by telling us that his 
" height was like the height of the cedars, 
and he was strong as the oaks." It is, 
indeed, likely that here, as is certainly the 
case in other places, such as Gen. xv. 16, the 
Amorites are taken by a synecdoche of 
eminence for all the Canaanitish tribes ; but 
by this fact their superior importance is just 
as strongly intimated. As this sometimes 
renders it doubtful whether the proper 
Amorites may be particularly intended or 
not, and as they were, moreover, of a re- 
markably encroaching disposition, it is not 
quite easy to fix their original seats with 
precision. It would seem, however, that they 
were first settled among the mountains to 
the west of the Dead Sea and of the southern 
part of the Jordan. While the Israelites 
were in Egypt, the Amorites crossed the 
Jordan, and, dispossessing the Moabites and 
Ammonites of the country between the 
rivers Jabbock and Arnon, established there 

* Gen. xv. 21 ; 2 Sam. v. 6 ; 1 Chron. xi. 4. 



an independent kingdom, which the ensuing 
history will bring conspicuously under our 
notice. The original seats of the tribe to the 
west of the Dead Sea and the Jordan were 
not, however, vacated, but the old and new 
settlements, separated by the river and the 
lake, do not appear to have had any de- 
pendence on each other. Indeed, it may be 
important to bear in mind that, in the early 
ages of which we speak, when the pressure of 
circumstances drove forth part of a tribe to 
seek new settlements, the now familiar idea 
of the necessary relations of dependence and 
subjection on the part of the offset towards 
the government of the original body, was one 
that never entered the minds of either. It 
was a discovery of later ages. This had its 
advantages ; but it had the counterbalancing 
disadvantage, if it be one, that, seeing that 
the separation was in every way effectual, 
and that the emigrants had no right to look 
to the parent body for protection and sup- 
port, they were obliged at the outset to be 
heedful that their own separate resources 
were adequate to the objects they had in 
view. Hence, emigrations by tribes or sec- 
tions of tribes seeking new settlements were 
only made by large bodies of men, which 
contained in themselves every provision then 
thought necessary for independent existence, 
conquest, self-protection, and self-support. 
This cause and this effect acted reciprocally 
on each other, the effect reacting to per- 
petuate the cause by which it was produced. 
The strong and vigorous offsets, expecting no 
assistance and intending no subjection, took 
care to put themselves above the need of 
help ; and that they did so, prevented the 
parent state from entertaining any notion 
that assistance might be called for, and, as a 
consequence, that subjection might be pro- 
per. This was the state of things at the be- 
ginning. Colonies had thus no infancy or 
adolescence, during which it was needful 
that they should lean upon the parent's sup- 
porting arm, till they grew to the full stature 
of a nation. Yet the several branches of the 
same family were not unmindful of one 
another. The relations of the several states 
springing from the same source, to each 
other, and to the parent state, appear in 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



general to have been those of friendship and 
alliance, with a greater readiness to coalesce 
for common purposes than was usually shown 
among unrelated tribes. 

This statement, though intended for larger 
application, is introduced here for the imme- 
diate purpose of showing how there came to 
be an independent Amoritish kingdom in the 
country beyond Jordan. It might even ap- 
pear from Josh. v. 1, which speaks of " all 
the kings of the Amorites, which were on 
the side of Jordan westward," that there 
were several Amoritish monarchies west of 
the Jordan ; but we rather incline to think 
that this is one of the passages in which the 
Amorites are named by a synecdoche of emi- 
nence for all the kingdoms not included 
among " the Canaanites which were by the 
sea" (the Phoenicians) .which the context 
mentions. And yet we think there were 
several distinct little royalties among them ; 
for if there were thirty-one kingdoms in so 
small a territory as Palestine, at the time of 
the conquest by the Hebrews, it seems un- 
questionable that several of them must have 
been in the hands of the Amorites, as they 
were certainly one of the most numerous and 
important of the families by which the 
country was originally peopled. 

But, at the time of the Hebrew conquest, 
the Amorites had not only extended east- 
ward beyond the Jordan, but westward to- 
wards the Mediterranean. The allotment of 
Dan, and the western portion of that of 
Ephraim, extended over the plains and 
valleys west of the central hills, and their 
western border approached as near to the sea 
as the previous occupation of the coast by a 
powerful people would allow. But we learn 
from a very instructive passage * that both 
the tribes had to contend for this portion of 
their domain with the Amorites. The 
Ephraimites, though the most successful, 
were not able to drive them out, as was their 
object, but were obliged to be content with 
making them tributary : but the Danites 
were entirely kept out of the plain by the 
Amorites, and obliged to confine themselves 
to the mountains, in consequence of which a 
body of them were ultimately compelled to 



seek out a remote settlement in a part of 
the countiy unappropriated by any kindred 
tribe. 

We have been drawn into these antici- 
patory details by the desire of making the 
position of this important member of the 
Canaanitish family clearly understood. It 
will, however, be borne in mind that much 
of its relative importance was the growth of 
a later age than that at which this history 
commences. Then their place seems to have 
been among the hills bordering on the west 
the valley of the Jordan, which valley then 
included the vale of Siddim, afterwards the 
Asphaltic lake. Consequently their territory 
closely adjoined that of the children of Heth 
in one part, — so closely, indeed, that it is 
not. easy to see whether Abraham when 
encamped at Marnre was a nearer neighbour 
to the Hittites or to the Amorites. Hebron 
was not quite a mile from Mamre, and was 
in the hands of the children of Heth ; but 
Mamre itself was so called after a living 
Amorite chief of that name, who evidently 
abode there, or thereabout ; for he, with his 
two brothers, Aner and Eshcol, were friends 
and confederates with Abraham, and joined 
him in his noted expedition in pursuit of 
the four kings who had cariied Lot aw 7 ay 
captive. After this, it seems somewhat 
remarkable that the only hostile transaction 
(excepting the sad affair at Shechem) in 
which any of the Hebrew patriarchs appear I 
to have been involved with the people of 
Canaan, was between Jacob and the Amorites. 
The circumstance is not historically recorded, 
nor would it have been known but for the 
allusion which the patriarch himself makes 
to it when bestowing his dying blessing 
upon his favourite son, Joseph, to whom he 
gives one portion above his brethren, which 
portion, he says, " I took out of the hand of 
the Amorite with my sword and with my 
bow."t 

Of the Girgashites very little historical 
notice is taken : indeed we know little more 
of them than that their name occurs in the 
list of the nations by wliich the country was 
occupied. It is supposed that they were 
seated along the upper Jordan, and more 

t Gen. xlviii. 22. 

: . J 



CHAP. I.] 



FIKST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 



9 



particularly upon the eastern borders of the 
lake of Gennesareth. This conclusion is 
founded chiefly on the fact that this district 
continued, even in the time of Christ, to 
bear the name of " the country of the 
Gergesenes." That we do not meet with 
them in h ; story among the nations which 
warred against the Hebrews, the Jewish 
writers account for by telling us that they 
evaded the contest, as one from which they 
had no hope, and emigrated to Africa, where 
they ultimately settled in a country which 
from them took the name of Gursrestan. 

The Hivites, also called the A vim, are said 
to have been originally settled in the advan- 
tageous district afterwards occupied by the 
Philistines ; on their expulsion from which 
by that people, they were unable to obtain 
situations for the whole of their body, and 
therefore separated, one part of them settling 
to the north of the Jebusites, in what after- 
wards became the finest portion of Benjamin's 
lot, and where, on the return of the Israelites 
from Egypt, they were in possession of the 
" great city " of Gibeon, and other important 
towns. The other portion withdrew to the 
more vacant territory beyond Jordan, and 
established itself about Mount Hermon. 
Some think that the Hivites originally on 
the coast were wholly destroyed by the 
Philistines ; and that these other settlements 
— the existence of which is undisputed — had 
been previously established, and remained 
undisturbed by that event. But the account 
which we have given seems to result more 
clearly from a comparison of the several 
texts which bear on the subject*. 

We have now gone through the list of the 
families which are expressly described in the 
tenth chapter of Genesis, as being descended 
from Canaan, and as occupying the country 
which received his name. The list is very 
valuable, if only as enabling us to know, 
when the name of any clan occurs, whether 
or not it belonged to the common Canaanitish 
stock, or was derived from some" other source, 
which knowledge sometimes throws a light 
upon the transactions in which we find them 
engaged. 

* Dent. ii. 23; Josh. ix. 17; x. 2; xi. 3; xiii. 3. 



The promise made to Abraham, that his 
descendants should possess the land in which 
he was a stranger, gave occasion for the 
introduction of another enumeration of the 
clans among whom the country was then 
divided t. This list differs in several respects 
from the former, and requires examination. 

It omits the names of the Sidonians, the 
Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zema- 
rites, and the Hamathites, as does every 
other and later list ; but, as we have already 
suggested, they are probably included under 
the name of Canaanitas, which first occurs 
in the list we are now reviewing, as the 
name of a section of Canaan's descendants. 
The name of the Hivites also does not occur 
in this list ; but we shall presently find an 
account for it. 

The names in which this list coincides 
with the former are" those of the Hittites, 
the Amorites, the Girgashites, and the Jebu- 
sites. 

The new names are those of the Kenites, 
the Kenizzites, the Perizzites, and the 
Rephaims, besides that of the Canaanites, to 
which we have already alluded. 

The Kenizzites not being mentioned in 
the list of those nations whom the Hebrews 
ultimately overcame at the Conquest, it is 
probable that in the interval they either 
migrated or were absorbed by some other 
tribe. Their situation is unknown, and the 
only inference which looks moderately pro- 
bable is that which, from their being named 
between the Kenites and Kadmonites, sup- 
poses that they occupied some part of the 
country beyond Jordan. In that case, it 
is supposable that they were expelled or 
absorbed by the Midianites, Moabites, Ammo- 
nites, Amorites, or Bashanites, among whom 
the east country was found to be divided 
when the Hebrews arrived from Egjpt. 

As the Hivites are not noticed in this list, 
though their name occurs in others of later 
date, and we know historically of their 
continued existence as a people, it has been 
rather generally supposed that they are here 
denoted by the name of Kadmonitesr The 
reason for this is, that the word Kadmonites 
means Easterlings, or . people of the East 

t Gen. xv. 19—21. 



10 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



eouutry ; and we know that some of the 
Hivites were settled under Mount Hermon, 
in the north-east. But if we do not consider 
ourselves bound to account for the omission 
of the Hivites, and still lay stress upon the 
signification of the name of Kadmonites, it 
might seem quite as well to understand this 
as a general term for all the tribes then 
occupying, or rather living in, the country 
east of the Jordan. As none of these became 
of historical note, it might not seem needful 
to mention them more particularly — the less 
so as they were all superseded, and other 
nations, with whom we are made well 
acquainted, filled their place, at the time 
the Israelites arrived among them after their 
years of wandering in the desert. Indeed, 
from the facility with which Midian, Moab, 
Ammon, and others, were able to establish 
themselves " in the east country," it would 
seem to have been very thinly occupied in, 
and for some time after, the age of Abraham. 
The existence of few settled communities in 
it are intimated ; and its chief inhabitants 
were doubtless the dwellers in tents, who 
must early have been attracted by the rich 
pastures which Gilead and Bashan offered to 
their herds and flocks. 

The Perizzites are not named in the 
original list, in Gen. x. 15—18, of the families 
descended from Canaan: it is, however, 
generally concluded that they were real 
Canaanites, and that the name they bore is 
rather to be taken as characterizing their 
mode of life than as indicating their descent. 
But, even so, interpreters are not quite 
agreed as to the mode of life which the 
name of Perizzite indicates. Calmet *, 
influenced by an erroneous etymology of the 
word, which makes their name to denote a 
dispersed people, thinks that they were a 
pastoral people who traversed the land of 
Canaan with their flocks, without any fixed 
habitations. But in Hebrew the word pera- 
zoth denotes villages, or hamlets, in the open 
country, in opposition to walled towns ; and 
hence Perizzite, when used otherwise than 
as a gentile name, describes a dweller in the 
open country, an inhabitant of such villages, 
that is, a peasant. Hence the reasonable 

* ' Hist, de l'Ancien Test.* tomei. 61. 



enough conjecture of Wells t and others, 
that such of the Canaanites in general as 
lived not in well-frequented towns and cities, 
but in villages and hamlets about the 
country, were comprehended under the 
general name of Perizzites, that is, villagers 
or rustics, to whatever particular nation 
they belonged. The Sacred History notices 
their presence about Bethel (Gen. xiii. 7), in 
the northern part of what became the inhe- 
ritance of Judah (Jud. i. 4, 5), and in the 
hilly woodlands of central Palestine (Josh, 
xi. 3 ; xvii. 15 — 18) ; but the incidental 
indications of history cannot be supposed to 
show all the localities of such a people. 
That they were a less polite and civilized 
people than those who dwelt in towns, is 
probable from the analogy of circumstances ; 
but we abstain from introducing that pecu- 
liarly unfavourable character of them which, 
without any historical warrant, some writers 
have ventured to draw on the strength of 
that assumption. 

There is happily no difficulty in finding 
the situation of the Rephaim in the time of 
Abraham, since we are expressly told (in 
Gen. xiv. 5) that they abode near Ashteroth 
Karnaim, or rather, perhaps, about the site 
on which that city afterwards stood. This 
was near the eastern border of that portion of 
the country beyond J ordan which afterwards 
fell to the lot of the half-tribe of Manasseh. 
" But," as old Fuller observes, " though here 
was their principal nest, we find some of 
their feathers scattered in other places." 
He alludes to "the valley of the Rephaim" 
near Jerusalem, through or by which the 
boundary-line between Judah and Benjamin 
in after-times passed ; and to another in the 
tribe of Ephraim J. As, however, we do not 
find them in these situations till the time of 
Joshua, it is reasonable to infer that the 
clan, or some sections of it, had, interme- 
diately, migrated thither from their original 
seats east of the Jordan. 

• 

The long list through which we have 

t 'Geog. of the Old Test.' Pt. i. ch. 8. 51. 

i Compare Josh. xv. 8 i xvii. 15; and 2 Sam. v. 18. Our 
public translation, however, instead of preserving Rephaim 
as a gentile name, translates it into "giants" — "the 
valley of the giants"—" the land of the giants." 



CHAP. I.] 



FIRST I'NHABITAN 



:TS OF PALESTINE. 



11 



attended the reader has not yet exhausted 
the names of the clans seated in and on the 
borders of Palestine. A few names are 
added to the list of border-tribes in the brief 
account which is given, in Gen. xiv., of the 
expedition of Chedorlaomer and his allies. 
Happily the passage precludes uncertainty 
by specifying not only the names of the 
people, but the situations which they occu- 
pied. We are told that the invaders " smote 
the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and 
the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in 
Shaven Kiriathaim, and the Hivites in their 
Mount Seir, unto El-paran, which is by the 
wilderness. And they returned, and came 
to Enmishpat, which is in Kadesh, and smote 
all the country of the Amalekites, and also 
the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar." 
In this passage all the names, except those 
of the Rephaim and Amorites, are such as 
have not previously occurred. 

In the preceding page the conjecture has 
been offered that the term Kadmonites, or 
" Easterlings," was probably used as a 
general Dame for all the tribes east of the 
river Jordan ; and it may then be said that 
the names of the Rephaim, the Emim, and 
the Zuzim, were those of particular tribes 
comprehended under that general denomina- 
tion. At all events it is certain that they were 
all seated in the country east of the Jordan. 

As to the Rephaim, our previous statement 
shows that they were in the country which 
afterwards formed the kingdom of Og king 
of Bashan. With respect to the Emim, we 
have, in Deut. ii., very clear information. 
Moses, speaking to the Israelites while they 
were in the plains of Moab, before crossing 
the Jordan, and looking back to the times of 
which we now treat — times anterior to the 
existence of even the founder of the Moabites, 
says, " the Emim dwelt therein (in the land 
of Moab) in times past, a people great, and 
many, and tall, as the Anakim ; which also 
were accounted giants, as the Anakim ; but 
the Moabites call them Emim." From this 
it is clear that in the patriarchal times they 
dwelt in the country which the Hebrews 
found in the occupation of the Moabites 
when they marched through it on their way 
to the Jordan. 



The Jewish writers, with the greatest 
probability, conclude that the Zuzim of 
Gen. xiv. are the same as the Zamzummim 
of Deut. ii. From the mention of them in 
the latter chapter, they appear to have been 
a very similar people to the Emim. Speaking 
of the land occupied by the descendants of 
Ammon, the brother of Moab, Moses observes, 
on the same occasion as that which supplies 
the former statement, " That also was 
accounted a land of giants : giants dwelt 
therein in old time ; and the Ammonites 
call them Zamzummim ; a people great, and 
many, and tall as the Anakim ; but the 
Lord destroyed them before them ; and they 
succeeded them and dwelt in their stead." 
This information concerning the Emim and 
Zuzim is very clear, and needs no elucida- 
tion ; and as they are not again mentioned 
in the patriarchal history, and were destroyed 
before the Hebrews arrived from Egypt, we 
shall not have any future occasion to notice 
them, unless in connexion with some inquiry 
concerning giants, which the progress of this 
work will render necessary. At present it is 
only requisite to direct the attention of the 
reader to the fact that there is no force or 
meaning in the plainest and most literal 
language, if the passages which we have 
cited do not state that there were some 
gigantic races among the early generations 
of men. Here and elsewhere, however, we 
are informed of their destruction or gradual 
extinction ; so that, of " the races of the 
giants," only a few individuals, and they of 
one family, appear to have remained to the 
time of David. But we must not anticipate 
an inquiry reserved for a future page. 

The history of the Horites in Seir is very 
similar to that of the people of whom we 
have just spoken. They occupied the 
mountains of Seir in the time of Abraham, 
but were ultimately dispossessed by the 
descendants of his own grandson, Esau, the 
father of the Edomites, who will, hereafter, 
often come historically under our notice. 
This information we also obtain from Deut. 
ii., where we are told that the Lord destroyed 
the Horites before the children of Esau 
which dwelt in Seir ; and they " succeeded 
them" and "dwelt in their stead." A slight 



12 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book l 



variation in the phraseology of this state- 
ment, as compared with the others, intimates 
that when the Edomites extirpated the 
Horites, they had previously dwelt among 
them : and, correspondingly, we find that 
Esau had established himself, as a powerful 
chieftain in Seir, by the time that Jacob 
returned from Mesopotamia ; and the further 
information, now given, intimates that, when 
his posterity and retainers felt themselves 
strong enough, they rose against the old 
inhabitants, overthrew them, and established 
their own sovereignty over the mountains. 
It seems possible to collect from the remark- 
able but obscure details in Gen. xxxvi., that 
the Edomites lived in a part of Mount Seir 
in independence, under a government of 
their own, for some time before they were, 
able to establish their dominion over all the 
mountains ; or, in other words, there seems 
clear intimation that the Edomites and 
Horites divided the possession of Seir between 
them until the former became strong enough 
to add the portion of the Horites to their 
own, reducing the whole to their single 
dominion, it is also a very singular circum- 
stance that the chapter to which we refer 
gives an account, not only of the posterity of 
Edom, but of that of "Seir the Horite:" 
from which last phrase it would seem that 
Seir, from whom the mountains generally 
took their names, was no other than a very 
eminent man among the descendants of Hor. 
It is a very striking instance of the tenacity 
with which the most ancient names cling to 
the sites on which they were originally 
imposed, that, while the names of Esau and 
his descendants cannot be recognised in those 
which any of the sites and conspicuous 
points in these mountains bear, the older 
names of Hor and of Seir himself are well 
preserved to this day. Now, as in the time 
of the patriarchs, the range, or a most 
important part of it, bears the name of 
Mount Seir-, in the softened form of Mount 
Shera, and now, as in the time of Moses, the 
most conspicuous summit — that on which 
Aaron died. — bears the name of Mount Hor. 
A thousand similar instances occur, in w r hich 
the new or repeatedly altered names, imposed 
by successive conquerors and overthrowers, 



are quite forgotten, and the venerable old 
patriarchal names, which the first inhabitants 
of the earth bestowed, are alone remembered 
by the people of the land. 

The mention of the Amalekites in the 
account of Chedorlaonier's expedition would 
not, to the general reader, appear to suggest 
any difficulty. But a difficulty has arisen 
from the incompatibility of this fact with 
the received opinion concerning the origin 
of the Amalekites. No person of the name 
of Amalek is mentioned in Scripture save a 
grandson of Esau * ; and therefore it has 
been concluded that this Amalek was the 
founder of the Amalekites ; and the difficulty 
which is offered to this conclusion by the 
fact that the Amalekites are mentioned as a 
people many years before even Esau, the 
grandfather of this Amalek, was born, is got 
over by the convenient conjecture that the 
Amalekites are mentioned proleptically in 
the time of Abraham, and that " the country 
of the Amalekites" means no more than the 
country which the Amalekites ultimately 
occupied. To such a hypothesis we should 
not at all object, if we saw any real necessity 
for it ; that is, if some fact or circumstance 
mentioned in history could not be understood 
without such an explanation. But this is 
very far from being the case in the present 
instance. Here we have a simple historical 
fact recorded, and there we have a conjecture 
founded on the mere occurrence of a name ; 
and that the fact should give place to the 
conjecture, instead of the conjecture being 
held untenable, because incompatible with 
the fact, is a course which appears to require 
much stronger reasons than any which can 
be adduced in the present instance. Indeed, 
were the alternatives opposing facts, instead 
of conjecture opposed to fact, the collateral 
evidence which must decide betw een equally 
balanced alternatives seems far more in 
favour of the earlier origin of the Amalekites 
than of their descent from Esau, and renders 
it a far more reasonable conclusion that 
Esau's grandson was named after the founder 
of a neighbouring people, already powerful, 
than that he was himself the progenitor of a 
nation so proverbially powerful as the 

* Gen. xxxvi. 12. 



CHAP. I.] 



FIRST INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE. 



13 



Amalekites were at the time that the Israelites 
departed from Egypt. As this people make 
a considerable figure in the following historj r , 
it has seemed proper to make these observa- 
tions on their origin. Such particulars as are 
known of their history will transpire in the 
course of the historical narrative. And it is 
only necessary to add in this place that the 
territory which they overspread appears to 
have extended from the heart of the Sinai 
peninsula northward, along the borders of 
the desert towards the southern frontier of 
Palestine. 

In the early history of Palestine there is 
no people, after the Hebrews, who come more 
frequently under our notice, and in whose 
proceedings we take greater interest, than 
the Philistines. Their importance is indicated 
by the simple fact that the country derived 
from this people the name of Palestine, 



which it had acquired as early as the departure 
of Israel from Egypt. In the notice of the 
Hivites it has been already shown that the 
Philistines were not one of the original 
nations of Canaan, but they obtained a 
settlement there by the expulsion of the 
Hivites. Their previous history has been a 
subject of much discussion, and offers a 
matter of curious inquiry, to which we shall 
not be inattentive ; but we find that a 
subsequent page will afford a more suitable 
opportunity than the present for the intro- 
duction of the observations which a careful 
examination of the subject may enable us to 
offer ; and what we may then state will 
become much clearer to the reader through 
various particulars which the course of the 
narrative will intermediately require us to 
produce. 



NOTE ON CHRONOLOGY. 



Some of the dates given in the text will not 
fail to strike the reader as very different from 
those to which he is most accustomed, as oc- 
curring in the margin of our Bibles. They are 
derived from Dr. Hales. As this computation 
adds no les3 than 1407 years to the age of the 
world, and as it involves the necessity of con- 
siderable trouble in its application to historical 
uses, it will easily be believed that we have 
only determined to adopt it after very anxious 
consideration and strict examination of the 
evidence on which it stands. 

But although it is now first adopted formally 
in a regular history, such of our readers as have 
paid the least attention to the subject will not 
regard it as a very startling innovation. The 
question between the shorter and longer chro- 
nologies has been so often and so largely dis- 
cussed, and the evidence in favour of the longer 
has acquired such strength, and has, lastly, been 
so clearly set forth by Dr. Hale3, that only the 
disposition to acquiesce in that which has re- 
ceived the sanction of time and of general use, 
together with the labour which the alteration 
involves, can adequately account for the re- 
tention of the shorter system by historical 
writers, some of whom have, indeed, not re- 
tained it without recording their convictions in 



favour of the computation which, in practice, 
they were too indolent or too timid to adopt. 
Its historical adoption now, in a work of this 
nature, does not require much courage, nor can 
be regarded as a measure of doubtful propriety : 
for we believe the time is fully come, in which 
no writer need be anxious for anything more 
than the solid truth of that opinion or system 
to which he declares his adherence. And for 
the present question in particular, it is so far 
fortunate, that no point of faith is involved in 
the shorter chronology, and that those who have 
disputed its claims and advocated its rejection, 
have all been, to a man, persons of eminent 
orthodoxy. This is particularly the case with 
the distinguished chronologer and eminent 
scholar by whom the claims of the longer j 
system have been elucidated beyond all pos- 
sibility of future observation ; and those whom 
some fanciful and suspicious speculations of Dr. 
Hales may have induced to examine his chro- 
nological principles more guardedly than they 
might otherwise have deemed necessary, will 
feel proportionate satisfaction in rising from the 
inquiry with the most entire conviction that his 
conclusions with respect to the Scriptural chro- 
nology, have been founded on a rock, and can 
never be overthrown. To ourselves it w'dl be a 



14 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



particular satisfaction, if our adoption of the j duration of the interval between the creation 
larger computation helps in any degree to bring and the birth of Christ, and the respective 
it into more general use, seeing that there are i dates of the various events which that grand 
few studious men who do not now accept its j interval embraces, have been determined, 
guidance in their private historical or chrono- j The process is clear enough, but not so its 
logical researches. particular applications and developments. We 

As there will probably be among our readers are, undoubtedly, to follow implicitly the Sacred 
some who have but little acquaintance with Scriptures; but the difficulty is in ascertaining 
this really important subject, a slight explana- what the Scriptures really do state, and in coi- 
tion may be considered necessary. lecting and combining the information which 

Our information concerning the age of the , they intend to convey, 
world, and of the interval between the different ! At the outset there is this great difficulty, 
great epochs in its history, is necessarily de- | that the present Masorete copies of the Hebrew 
rived, in the earlier portions, entirely from the j Scriptures differ very greatly from the Septua- 
materials which the Scriptures supply. The ! gint and from Josephus. The Samaritan Pen- 
first information is supplied by genealogies, I tateuch differs from the Hebrew in some im- 
which ascend as high as the first man. They [ portant particulars ; its estimate of the ante- 
tell us at what age he begat a son, how long I diluvian generations is shorter than even that 
after he survived, and the number of years he. j of the Hebrew; and, although its estimate of 
lived : the same information is supplied con- the postdiluvian is higher, the resulting effect 
ceniing his son, and so on through many j leaves it with the Hebrew as affording an 
generations. By adding these particulars to- ) estimate more than 1000 years less than that 
gether, we have a clear and unquestionable which the Septuagint and Josephus require, 
estimate of the whole duration of time over The two latter do not exactly coincide, but they 
which they extend ; and as we know the ages approach so nearly, and so it is easy to detect 
of particular persons, we also know the date of and remove the cause of difference, that their tes- 
such events as are said to have occurred in some timony may be regarded as one. But to explain 
particular year of their lives. Information of j all this the more clearly, we must give the 
this kind comes down to the more proper his- | reader some idea of the discrepancies and ana- 
torical data, in which we compute time by ; logies of the various computations, before that 
adding together the particulars which inform j period at which they came to an agreement, 
us, successively, of the durations of captivities, j This is best done by stating the intervals which 
wanderings, reigns, and governments. If, in they respectively place between certain marked 
the same time, genealogies occur, and the in- I epochs. We have included the computation of 
tervals between two great events happen to be j Archbishop Usher, founded on the Hebrew text, 
specified, these are valuable materials whereby ; as his account is that which is most generally 
to test or corroborate the deductions from his- ! received, and has been adopted in our Bibles, 
torical data. It is by this process that the ! 





1 

Hebrew: 
Vulgar Account. 


Hebrew : 
Usher's Account. 


Samaritan. 


Septuagint: 
Alexandrine. 


Josephus, as 
corrected by Hales. 




A.M. 


B.C. 


Inter- 
val. 


A.M. 


B.C. 


Inter- 
val. 


A.M. 


B.C. 


Inter- 
val. 


A.M. 


B.C. 


'inter- 
val. 


A.M. 


B.C. 


In ft- 
val. 


( reation . . . 




37G0 




1 


4004 




1 


4305 




1 


5508 


_ 


1 


5411 




Deluge. . . . 


1656 


2104 


1656 


1656 


2348 


1656 


1307 


2998 


1307 


2262 


3246 


2262 


2256 


3155 


2256 


Call of Abraham 


2018 


1742 


362 


2083 


1922 


426 


2334 


1921 


1077 


3469 


2039 


12(17 


3318 


2093 


1062 


Exode .... 


2448 


1312 


430 


2513 


1491 


430 


2814 


1491 


430 J 


3894 


1614 


425 


3764 


1648 


445 


Salomon's Tem-) 
pie founded . $ 


2928 


832 


480 


2992 


1012 


480 


3294 


1011 


480 I 


4495 


1013 


601 


4184 


1027 


621 


Solomon's Tern-) 
pie destroyed . / 


3338 


422 


410 


3396 


588 


424 


3718 


587 


424 


4919 


589 


424 


4825 


586 


44] 


Birth of Christ . 


3760 




422 

1 


4004 




588 


4305 




587 1 


5508 




589 


5411 




586 



Oil A. P. I.] FIRST INHABIT AN 

In this table the Samaritan and Septuagint 
accounts are extracted from tables in the valu- 
able Preface to the Ancient Universal History, 
and the others are derived from Hales, "with the 
addition of the " intervals." The materials for 
comparison which the table offers are well 
worthy of consideration. It will be seen that 
the Samaritan makes a much nearer general 
approximation to the Hebrew than to the Sep- 
tuagint or Josephus ; it makes a much shorter 
estimate of the interval between the creation 
and the deluge than any of even the Hebrew 
accounts; but, on the other hand, it gives a 
computation of the interval between the deluge 
and the call of Abraham so much longer than 
that of the Hebrew, as very nearly approximates 
to the generally longer reckoning of the Sep- 
tuagint and Josephus. It is important to observe 
that the Hebrew stands alone in its brief esti- 
mate of this most important period. The 
astonishing difference of 1748 years between the 
highest and lowest accounts, contained in the 
Table, of the era of the creation, will appear a 
very strong discrepancy; yet these are by no 
means the extreme points at which that era has 
been estimated. Alphonso, King of Castile, 
reckons the date of the creation at 6984 B.C., 
and Rabbi Lippman computes it at 3616 B.C., 
the difference being 3370 years ! 

The reader will already have discovered that 
those who follow the Hebrew text, as it now 
stands, are not at all agreed in the computations 
which they found upon it. The lowest estimate 
from this source has just been given : the highest 
is that of the Seder Olam Sutha, or ' Small 
Chronicle of the World,' published about a.d. 
1121, which dates the creation B.C. 4359. 

Now, taking the Hebrew and the Septuagint 
as the representatives, respectively, of the shorter 
and longer estimates, it is quite evident that 
one of them must have been corrupted. It is 
also clear that this corruption took place, not 
only after the birth of Christ, but after Jerusalem 
was destroyed; for Josephus clearly testifies 
that when he wrote, towards the end of the first 
century, the Hebrew and the Septuagint were 
in perfect chronological accordance ; and, at a 
somewhat earlier date, Philo gave his valuable 
evidence to the same effect. The motive by 
which such a corruption may have been induced 
is easily found. The Jews had a cherished 
tradition that the Messiah was to appear about 
the middle of the sixth millenary age of the 
world ; at that time Christ did, in fact, appear, 



T3 OP PALESTINE. 15 



according to the longer chronology, and that 
this, their own tradition, was alleged against 
them by the early Christians, supplied a motive 
for the Jews to tamper with the Scriptural 
genealogies, whereby they might contend that 
he appeared much before the expected time, 
and show that they still had ground for expecting 
the Messiah. That the Jews had this tradition 
we know ; and we also know that their writers 
have often availed themselves of this argument, 
founded on the present state of the Hebrew 
text. That, in their bitter enmity to Christ, 
they would not much scruple at such a pro- 
ceeding, we can learn from contemporary autho- 
rities (Justin Martyr, for instance), who dis- 
tinctly charge them with altering or erasing 
passages in their Scriptures which the Christians 
were in the habit of adducing to prove that 
Christ was the Messiah foretold by the prophets. 

If, then, the Jews desired to alter the gene- 
alogies, it was much easier for them to do so in 
the Hebrew than in the Septuagint. The copies 
of the former had become scarce during the 
wars, and the comparatively few remaining 
copies belonged to the synagogues or were in 
the hands of learned Jews, the Hebrew of the 
Bible being then a dead language ; whereas the 
Septuagint being in a living language, exten- 
sively understood, the copies were numerous, a 
great number of them in the hands of Chris- 
tians, and many, probably, even in the libraries 
of the curiously-learned heathen. The Jews 
could hardly at that time falsify the Septuagint, 
but they could the Hebrew, and then appeal to 
its superior authority to throw discredit on the 
Septuagint. And that this was actually done 
appears from the statement of Eusebius, that, 
even so late as his time, the longer chronology 
had not wholly disappeared from the Hebrew 
Bibles ; some of which then had the shorter and 
others the longer account, agreeing with the 
Septuagint. The Hebrew text, as it now stands, 
also offers not a few internal evidences of altera- 
tion, some very conclusive instances of which 
Dr. Hales has pointed out. 

But it may further be shown that the Hebrew 
chronology is irreconcilable with probability 
and fact. Eusebius well remarks, " The error 
of the Jewish Hebrew text is evident from this, 
— that it makes Abraham and Noah contem- 
poraries, which is inconsistent with all history : 
for since, according to the Hebrew text, there 
were not more than 292 years from the flood to 
the birth of Abraham, and since, according to 



16 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



the same text, Noah survived the flood 350 
years, it follows that he lived to the 58th year 
of Abraham." 

To this judicious remark Hales adds : — 

" Upon this supposition, idolatry must have 
begun and prevailed, and the patriarchal go- 
vernment have been overthrown by Ximrod 
and the builders of Babel, during the lifetime 
of the second founder of the human race, and 
his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. 

"If Shem lived until the 110th year of Isaac 
and the 50th year of Jacob, why was not he 
included in the covenant of circumcision made 
with Abraham and his family] — or why is he 
utterly unnoticed in their history? 

"How could the earth be so populous in 
Abraham's days, or how could the kingdoms of 
Assyria, Egypt, &c, be established so soon after 
the deluge ? " This last difficulty was strongly 
felt by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in his ' History 
of the World, ' remarks, " In this patriarch's 
time all the then parts of the world were 
peopled ; all nations and countries had their 
kings ; Egypt had many magnificent cities, and 
so had Palestine, and all the neighbouring 
countries; yea, all that part of the world be- 
sides, as far as India : and these, not built with 
sticks, but of hewn stone and with ramparts; 
which magnificence needed a parent of more 
antiquity than those other men have supposed." 
In another pla^ 1 ° forcibly observes, "If we 
advisedly consi .e state and countenance of 
the world, such as it was in Abraham's time, 
yea, before his birth, we shall find it were very 
ill done, by following opinion without the guide 
of reason, to pare the times over-deeply between 
the flood and Abraham ; because in cutting 
them too near the quick, the reputation of the 
whole story might perchance bleed." And it 
has bled. The sagacity of this accomplished 
man did not erroneously anticipate that "the 
scorners" would not fail to detect and make the 
most of the great and serious difficulties which 
the shorter chronology creates, but which by 
the longer computation are wholly obviated. 

After all this, we trust that it will be felt that 
we have done well, and taken a safe course, in 
adopting the longer account for the present 
work ; and we do not regret that the explana- 
tion which thus became necessary has afforded 
an opportunity of bringing so important a sub- I 



ject under the notice of many whose attention 
may not hitherto have been directed towards it. 

It only remains to state why the reckoning 
of Josephus in particular has been chosen. 

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to remind the 
reader that the account of that great historian 
is not a system of his own, but a statement of 
the interpretation, received in his time, of the 
account which the Scriptures gave. The Scrip- 
ture is still the authority; and Josephus is the 
witness of the testimony which it bore before 
any disagreement on the subject existed, and 
when the accounts of the Hebrew and the Sep- 
tuagint synchronized. The system is that of 
the Bible, and Josephus becomes the agent 
through which its uncorrupted statements may 
be recovered. His particulars evince great skill 
in reconciling apparent discrepancies, and in 
eliciting that which, when clearly stated, ap- 
pears at once to be the sense which the Scrip- 
tures convey, and which is in perfect agreement 
with every fact and circumstance which it re- 
cords. Besides this, he gives sums and results 
collected from the Scriptures; and how im- 
portant such materials are as tests, and as 
means of comparison and verification, no one 
who has given the least attention to such sub- 
jects needs be told. It is true that his numbers 
also have been much corrupted, in order to 
bring them into agreement with the Hebrew 
account ; but, happily, enough of sums and 
dates escaped the general spoliation, to afford 
materials for the detection of the alterations, 
and the restoration of the original numbers. 
In some cases, where the sum had been altered, 
the particulars sufficed to render the alteration 
manifest ; but more generally a number of sums 
which, having been stated incidentally, had 
escaped the general havoc, evinced the alteration 
of the details, and at the same time offered a 
firm basis for the restoration of the original 
edifice, which had been disfigured in some parts, 
and demolished in others, to the grievous injury 
of the builder's reputation. The beautifully 
connected chain of analytical and synthetical 
argument, by which Dr. Hales has effected this 
restoration, may, as one of the finest pieces of 
reasoning we possess, be recommended to the 
admiration even of those who feel but little 
interest in the subject to which it refers. 



[Redouin Encampment.] 



CHAPTER II. 



ABRAHAM. 



At the time which we have already indicated, 
the postdiluvian fathers had long been dead. 
While they lived, and while the flood and its 
causes were still fresh in the memories of 
men, the knowledge of the one true God 
appears to have remained clear, and uncor- 
rupted by the devices of the imagination. 

, The wild undertaking at Babel was a strong 
act of human madness and of daring pride ; 
but, although it proceeded on most mistaken 

■ notions of the character and power of God, 

; there is no indication that any measure of 
idolatry was involved in that strange deed. 
The ensuing confusion of tongues may have 
tended, in its ultimate effects — by obstruct- 
ing communications between the several 
tribes of men — to obscure the knowledge of 
the facts and doctrines which Noah and his 
sons had transmitted from the times before 
the flood. It could have had no immediate 

j and direct effect ; but it is easy to see that 
in time it must have put the several tribes 
in a better condition for forgetting that 
knowledge which had ceased to be the 

i common property of one language. Judging 



from the slight indications which the Scrip- 
tures offer, as well as from the analogous 
facts which it records, it would seem that 
the principles of social - 1 moral conduct 
were corrupted much soo. an the abstract 
belief in the unity and providence of God : 
but the former corruption, doubtless, hastened 
the latter, it being not more true that " a 
reprobate mind" results from the dislike of 
men " to retain God in their knowledge," 
than that the pre-existence of the reprobate 
mind produces that dislike. 

It is rather remarkable that the same 
country which witnessed the mad speculation 
of the builders at Babel and the primitive 
tyranny of Mmrod, is also that in which the 
first corruptions of religious opinion appear 
to have arisen. When the early inhabitants 
of Chaldea beheld, in their most beautiful 
sky, " the sun when it shined, and the moon 
walking in brightness," their hearts were 
" secretly enticed" to render to the creature 
the worship and honour due only to the 
Creator. This is the testimony of all anti- 
quity, which mentions no idolatrous worship 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



as c-f earlier date than that of Chaldea. And 
this is also, indirectly, the testimony of 
Scripture. In all the history of Abraham 
there is not the least intimation of the 
existence of idolatry or any idolatrous usage 
among any of the various peoples in whose 
territories he sojourned. It is clearly inti- 
mated of some of them that they worshipped 
Jehovah, and it is implied of others in the 
manner in which they mention his name : 
but that idolatry was practised in Chaldea 
before Abraham departed to the land of 
Canaan, and even that Abraham's family, if 
not himself, participated in that idolatry, is 
clearly stated by Joshua in his charge to the 
Israelites, when he says to them, "Your 
fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood 
[Euphrates] in old time, even Terah, the 
father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor : 
and they served other gods." (xxiv. 2.) This 
settles the question as to Terah himself ; 
and the Jews have a tradition which, as 
usual, improves considerably upon the scrip- 
tural intimation, by stating that Terah was 
not only an idolater, but an idolatrous priest, 
and a maker of idols. This conclusion 
appears to have been founded on the 
impression that the teraphim, the earliest 
manufactured objects of superstition men- 
tioned in Scripture, took their name from 
Terah; a conjecture that has seemed the 
more probable from the fact, that the 
teraphim are first brought under our notice 
as being in the possession of that branch of 
Terah's descendants which remained in 
Mesopotamia. But it is enough to know 
that before the time of Abraham, or, at 
least, in his early years, "other gods" than 
Jehovah were served beyond the great river, 
and that the family of Abraham concurred 
in that service. But that idol worship, in 
the restricted sense, as meaning the worship 
of images, was then known, is not very 
probable, and is, at least, incapable of proof. 
Men do not suddenly fall into so low a deep 
as this. The sun, the moon, the host of 
heaven, were the first of those " other gods " 
which attracted their admiration, secretly 
enticed their hearts, and, first, divided, and, 
in the end, entirely engrossed their reverence. 
To images they had not yet descended ; or, 



[liOOK I. 

if they had u teraphim," it may be welf 
doubted that these were idols for worship, in 
the usual sense of the expression. 

It may also be questioned whether, at this 
time, even the servers of other gods beyond 
the Euphrates had altogether ceased to 
serve, according to their own views, the God 
of their fathers. The first steps from good 
to bad are, not to reject the good, but to 
join that which is bad unto it. To forget 
God, and formally to deny him, were impos- 
sible as first acts of corruption. The first 
act of the mistaken mind was, doubtless, 
after the knowledge of his character and 
attributes had become faint, to regard him, 
not as a God at hand, but as a God afar off 
— removed too far from them by the ineffable 
sublimity of his essence, to be reasonably 
expected to concern himself in the small 
affairs of this world and its people. Yet, 
feeling that the world needed that govern- 
ment which they deemed Him too high to 
exercise, they imagined that, far below him, 
but far above themselves, there might be 
agents by whom the government of the 
universe was administered, and to whom 
even man might make the smallest of his 
wants and his humblest desires known with- 
out presumption. Seeking these agents, they 
looked first upon the sun, 

" that, with surpassing glory crown'd, 

Look'd from his sole dominion, like the god 
Of this new world," 

and deeming that they had found in him 
the chief of the agents which they sought, 
he became the object of their admiring 
reverence. To the sun was added the moon, 
and, in time, the principal of the stars ; and 
he who has considered well the human heart, 
can readily conceive that the originators of 
this intermediate worship may have imagined 
that they did God service, that it magnified 
his greatness, and showed a humbling sense 
of their own insignificance before him, when 
they intrusted to inferior hands the interests 
which they held to be much below his 
attention, and withdrew themselves afar off 
from the effulgence of his presence. But 
under such a system, or under any system 
which takes from the Almighty the govern- 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



19 



ment of the world, the honour due to him 
must need sink before long into a simple 
recognition of his existence ; and even this 
truth must in the end fade from the general 
mind, and exist only as a cold speculative 
dogma, known only to the higher theolo- 
gians, — a secret, whispered, in mystery and 
fear, to the chosen few, in groves, and caverns, 
and solitary places. All true and living 
worship can only come from the heart which 
is moved by love, hope, gratitude, or fear, 
and can only be rendered to one from whose 
beneficence blessings are hoped or have been 
received, or from whose anger evils are 
feared ; and to make the Almighty other 
than this, under whatever self deluding 
pretence of enhancing his glory, was really 
to render his sovereignty barren and nominal, 
and, as far as man might, to depose him 
from his kingly throne — the heart of man — 
and take his glory from him. Therefore 
God, knowing this inevitable result, at all 
times rejected with indignation the agents 
or helpers to whom men were willing to 
ascribe some part of that honour which he 
only could claim. Hence, the grand inter- 
diction on this subject, which he gave in 
later days to the house of Israel, struck at 
the beginnings of the evil. It said not, 
" Thou shalt have no other god instead of 
me;" but, "Thou shalt have none other 
gods before (or with, or besides) me." 

The worship of other gods having thus 
been established, God, foreknowing that 
it would overspread the earth, in such sort 
that he would be almost forgotten among 
the race which owed to him the breath of 
life, delayed not to take such measures as 
seemed best to his wisdom, to preserve his 
testimony among the nations until the 
arrival of that "time of refreshing" which 
he had predetermined, and the coming of 
which he made known with increasing 
distinctness as its date approached. To this 
end he determined to make one nation the 
steward of those great truths which were to 
become mysteries to the world at large — his 
unity, his supremacy, his providence — and to 
whom the hope of a future great deliverer 
might be committed. His unity he would 
impress upon them by repeated declarations, 



and by the abhorrent rejection and punish- 
ment of all attempts to associate other gods 
with him : his supremacy, by the overthrow 
of idolaters and their idols, and by the 
demonstration that the powers of nature 
were the creatures of his will ; and his pro- 
vidence — his universal rule, for which no- 
thing is too high, and from which nothing is 
exempt — at first, by occasional appearances, 
and, at last, by abiding manifestations of 
his presence among them. Thus to keep 
ever before them the truth that he was a 
God at hand and not a God afar off, and to 
compel them to remember, not only that 
" he is, but that he is a rewarder of those 
that diligently seek him," he would con- 
stitute himself the Legislator and King of 
this peculiar people — as a Legislator, he 
would give them a code of laws which 
should keep them apart from all other 
nations till the object was accomplished; 
and while, as a King, he directed all public 
measures, and rewarded public virtue and 
punished public guilt, he would make it 
manifest that his care extended to the 
meanest of his subjects, and that, while he 
dwelt among them in his high and holy 
place, he was not less present with the man 
of humble and contrite spirit. ^ 

To accomplish these object?, the Almighty 
did not see fit to make choice of any existing 
nation ; but to give a nation existence, and 
to watch over it from its birth, subjecting 
its infancy to his guidance and instruction, 
and forming its character and condition 
with a view to the great final objects of its 
being. 

Separately from these considerations, the 
history of this peculiar people cannot well 
be understood. To write their history is 
one chief part of the duty we have under- 
taken ; and that history is first the history 
of one man, then of a family, and then of a 
nation. 

In the district of northern Mesopotamia 
which is called in Scripture " Ur of the 
Chaldees," being apparently the large and 
fertile plain of Osroene, dwelt a wealthy 
pastoral family, descended, in the line of 
Heber, from Shem the son of Noah. The 
living head of this family was that Terah 



20 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



whom we have already found occasion to 
name. This man had three sons, Haran, 
Nahor, and Abram. Of these sons the last- 
named was the youngest, having been borne 
by Terah's second wife, fully sixty years 
later than Haran his elder brother. Haran 
died prematurely in the land of his nativity, 
leaving one son named Lot, and two 
daughters called Milcah and Sarai. Ac- 
cording to the custom of those times, the 
two surviving sons of Terah married the 
daughters of their dead brother; Milcah 
becoming the wife of Nahor, and Sarai 
being married to Abram. 

Abram, the youngest son of this family, 
is the person — the one man — with whom the 
history of the Hebrew people commences; 
for on him the Almighty saw proper to 
confer the high distinction of setting him- 
self and his future race apart among the 
nations, in fulfilment of the great object 
which we have already indicated. 

The fame which this appointment has 
brought upon the name of this great patri- 
arch has produced much anxious inquiry 
into that part of his history which tran- 
spired before our more authentic and un- 
doubted records introduce him to our know- 
ledge, which is not until he was sixty years 
of age. The traditions of the Jews and 
Arabians speak much of his early life ; but 
our certain information offers only the few 
facts of parentage and connection which we 
have just supplied. 

It thus also occurs, in many other cases, 
that such traditions supply much informa- 
tion which the Scriptures do not offer ; and 
it then becomes an anxious question to the 
historian, how far they may be accepted as 
materials for history. That they are not to 
be wholly disregarded, may be inferred from 
the circumstance that the Scripture does 
itself sometimes make allusions to facts, con- 
cerning persons and events of former ages, 
which the Scriptural accounts of them do 
not preserve, while yet these facts are 
alluded to as matters of current knowledge. 
It is, however, the peculiar felicity of a his- 
torian of the Jews, that he has for the basis 
of his narrative materials of unquestioned 
truth, which it is not needful for him to 



test, but only to understand. He is thus 
furnished with an unerring standard of his- 
torical verity, by which his information 
from other sources may be tested. That the 
information offered by the Jewish and other 
Oriental authorities is not to be found in the 
Bible, does not necessarily prove it to be 
untrue. It was not the object of the sacred 
writers to relate every historical event, or 
every circumstance of the events which they 
do relate, and still less every incident in the 
lives of those persons of whom they speak ; 
and that there existed among the Jews not 
only oral traditions but written documents 
of ancient date, containing particulars which 
the sacred narratives do not afford, appears 
very clearly, not only from the express refer- 
ences which the Scripture writers make to 
such documents as supplying further in- 
formation, but from the incidental a^usions 
— as to things well known to the Hebrew 
nation — to events and circumstances of 
which the historical narratives of Scripture 
give no account, and which are often of such 
ancient, date, at the time allusion is thus 
made to them, as to show that they could 
only then have existed in the knowledge of 
the people through oral traditions or written 
documents. The truth of the accounts 
which they afford is substantiated, in the 
particular instances, by the allusions thus 
made by the sacred writers to them, and 
which also reflect a high degree of respect- 
ability upon the source from which they 
were derived. 

If these documents and traditions had 
been preserved in their original fomis, they 
would rank on the same level with the first- 
rate materials of general history; but, con- 
sidering the superior and peculiar authority 
of the sacred narrative, only as second-rate 
materials in a history of the Jews. But 
they have long been lost; although, pro- 
bably, a considerable number of those de- 
tails, which the sacred historians did not 
find it necessary to embody in their com- 
pendious accounts, are preserved in the 
history by Josephus, and possibly a large 
proportion of them may exist, mixed with 
and disguised by enormous absurdities and 
matters of no value, in the traditions pre- 



CHAP. II.J 



ABRAHAM. 



served in ■writing by the Jews and the 
Arabians. It may be well to remember, 
that many accounts which come before us, 
as oral traditions committed to writing, 
must be regarded as having been originally 
derived from written documents, after the 
loss of which many of them survived as oral 
statements ; and in this state they certainly 
received many disguising exaggerations, ad- 
ditions, and dislocations, before they were 
ultimately recommitted to writing in the 
very repulsive form in which they now come 
before us. This is not, indeed, the account 
which the Jews themselves give; for they 
allege that all their traditions were ori- 
ginally oral, and never existed in writing 
until they were put into the form in which 
they now appear. This may willingly be 
conceded of the mass of them, which are 
many degrees worse than useless ; but to 
those who are disposed to carefully consider 
the subject, it will manifestly appear that 
they may be expected to contain a portion 
of the facts transmitted from those older 
and more authentic sources from which the 
Scriptural writers appear to have drawn 
their accounts, and to which they distinctly 
refer those who desire more extensive in- 
formation. We know, on the authority of 
Scripture, that some part at least of this 
more ancient information existed in writing ; 
but, as we are not sure that some of the al- 
lusions in Scripture may not be to facts con- 
tained in those oral traditions, it may be 
expedient to remind the reader that, from 
a variety of circumstances, the difference 
between oral tradition and written state- 
ment, as historical authority, is far less 
important in the east than in Europe ; and, 
even in the east, was far less important 
anciently than now. On these grounds we 
should be disposed to consider even oral 
ancient tradition as not necessarily excluded 
from historical notice, and, although we 
should scarcely be inclined to assign it a 
tithe of that pre-eminent value which the 
Jews claim for it, we shall sometimes con- 
sider it our duty to explore this class of 
materials, in the hope of finding a few of 
those further details which may have existed 
in ♦h.2 old documents or traditions to which 



the sacred writers occasionally refer. The 
mass of these statements, as they now stand, 
are so suspicious, that it will, in most cases, 
be necessary, in the first instance, to pre- 
sume that even the most plausible and 
needful of them are untrue, until, after a 
careful examination, the facts which they 
offer appear to be not only not contradictory 
to the standard narrative, but, while in 
themselves desirable for the completion or 
elucidation of the biblical accounts, are in 
circumstantial agreement with the facts 
which those accounts record, and are in no 
wise opposed in spirit to them. Even the 
statements which, after having been already 
sifted by Josephus, are admitted by him into 
his narrative, must be subjected to the same 
process. And when we are privileged to 
possess one standard narrative in which 
implicit confidence may be placed, the com- 
mon rules of historical criticism leave it far 
from difficult to estimate the value of the 
other reports which come before us; and 
this is easier still, when the agreement or 
disagreement of these reports with the spirit 
and manners of the age to which they refer 
becomes another element of our considera- 
tion. 

We have a very general suspicion of all 
the traditionary history which applies to the 
age of the patriarchs, whether Ave find it in 
Josephus, in the Rabbins, or in the Arabian 
historians. But, subject to this reservation, 
it may be desirable, for the information of 
the reader, sometimes to state the parti- 
culars which they offer, if only to mark the 
contrast between their injudicious elabora- 
tions and the simple and unaffected truth of 
the standard narrative. 

Most of the traditions which refer to the 
early life of Abram, turn upon the religion 
of his family. All we know from Scripture 
on this subject is, that Terah served other 
gods beyond the Euphrates, and there is not 
much reason to doubt but that Abram and 
the other members of Terah's family were 
brought up in the same service. That, as 
some allege, Abram stood alone as the sole 
worshipper of the true God, among an idola- 
trous people, and in a family of idolaters, 
and that therefore he became the special I 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



object of the Divine choice and favour, does 
not appear to us a very probable or a very 
necessary explanation. It is enough, and it 
is far more probable, that he felt unsatisfied 
with the things which he had been taught, 
and with the practices which were followed 
—that he had an inquiring mind, and 
sought after the true God, if haply he might 
find him; and we know that when he had 
found him, he manifested his satisfaction 
and joy by the most implicit and memorable 
obedience to every dictate of " the heavenly 
vision." 

The Jewish traditions undertake to decide 
the question whether image worship had 
commenced at this early date, by assuring 
us that Terah was himself a maker of 
images. And they proceed to inform us 
that, when God had enlightened Abram's 
mind, he took an opportunity of burning 
and destroying all the idols in his father's 
house; and, it is added, that Haran at- 
tempted to snatch the idols of his father 
from the fire, but was himself surprised by 
the flames, and perished with his gods. 
They thus account for the premature death 
of Haran, which the Scriptures only notice 
without explaining. 

We are further told that for this act 
Abram was accused before Nimrod, and was 
condemned to be burnt ; but that his Divine 
Protector miraculously withdrew him from 
the flames. These traditions are told with 
some variations ; but are in substance very 
ancient, and to this day are articles of firm 
belief among the Jews, Christians, and 
Moslems of the East. The word Ur means, 
in the Hebrew, Fire, and it is alleged that 
this last incident in the history of Abram is 
indicated in that passage of Scripture which 
tells us that God brought forth Abram from 
Ur (or the Fire) of the Chaldees. 

The excellent historian of the Jews, 
Josephus, could not but be well acquainted 
with all the current traditionary legends 
concerning their renowned forefather; but, 
although belonging to a sect (the Pharisees) 
which cherished "the traditions of the 
elders" with unusual zeal, he in general 
makes but a very guarded use of them ; and 
in his history of Abram omits all the par- 



ticulars which we have now stated. But in 
this instance, at least, the omission appears 
to have been rather from prudential con- 
siderations than from actual disbelief; for 
it is not difficult to discover the very tradi- 
tions which he allowed to influence his 
view of the religious character of the patri- 
arch. He very properly omits any notice of 
image worship ; but tells us that the people 
of Abram's native country were worshippers 
of the heavenly bodies, and possessed much 
knowledge of astronomy, with which science 
he intimates that Abram himself was well 
acquainted. He tells us that the patriarch 
was of a most sagacious and superior mind, 
and possessed an eloquence the most per- 
suasive. He had obtained, and endeavoured 
• to give to others, a much purer idea of God 
than in his time prevailed ; and he was the 
first to teach that the sun, the moon, and 
the host of heaven had no power of them- 
selves, but were subject to a superior power 
by which their movements were regulated. 
The Chaldeans and other inhabitants of 
Mesopotamia would not hear this doctrine ; 
and, when they raised a tumult against the 
preacher of it, he deemed it proper to leave 
the country, and by the command, and 
through the assistance of God, he went to 
sojourn in the land of Canaan*. 

This account contains nothing, that we 
can perceive, contrary to Scripture, though 
it offers information which Scripture does 
not contain. Nothing in it is more remark- 
able than the complete omission of all men- 
tion of Nimrod, who figures so conspicuously 
in all the Rabbinical and Oriental accounts 
of the patriarch, and whose presence would 
alone suffice to nullify them all: for, ac- 
cording to the just view of Scripture chro- 
nology which the historian took, Nimrod 
could not well have been the contemporary 
of Abram, but, according to ordinary cir- 
cumstances, must have been dead long 
before his birth. 

The Arabian traditions of Abram's early 
life do, in some of their details, conform 
very strikingly to the view which we have 
taken of his religious character; and, al- 
though replete with preposterous incidents, 

* ' Antiq.' lib. i. c. 6. 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



2S 



and unentitled to historical notice, are 
curious and characteristic in themselves, 
and are also interesting as showing the 
notions which a large division of the human 
race entertain concerning the early life of 
the great patriarch whose memory the 
Moslem unites with the Christian and the 
Jew to cherish. 

All these stories and traditions concur in 
intimating that Abram had, in his own 
country, brought enmity and opposition 
upon himself, by the open expression of 
opinions contrary to the corruptions of 
religion which there prevailed. To the 
same effect is the old account preserved in 
the apocryphal book of Judith, where the 
irritated Holofernes is represented as re- 
quiring information concerning the Jewish 
people from all the neighbouring princes. 
On this subject the descendants of Lot 
might be supposed to be better informed 
than any of the others; and, accordingly, 
Achior, " the captain of all the children of 
Ammon," is represented as coming forward 
to furnish the required intelligence, which 
he does in a slight sketch of the history of 
the Hebrew nation, which, brief as it is, 
contains some facts not recorded in the 
Scriptures. At the outset, he says, "This 
people is descended of the Chaldeans; and 
they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, 
because they would not follow the gods of 
their fathers, which were in the land of 
Chaldea. For they left the way of their 
ancestors and worshipped the God of heaven, 
the God whom they know: so they cast 
them out from the face of their gods, and 
they fled into Mesopotamia, and sojourned 
there many days." (Judith v. 2—8.) This 
statement would be curious and interesting 
if we could rely upon it as embodying the 
traditions of the Ammonites on this subject, 
seeing that Ammon, their ancestor, was the 
son of Lot, who was Abram's nephew, and 
the companion of his migration from Meso- 
potamia. But, from certain turns of expres- 
sion, which are not in keeping with the 
character of the speaker, it is evident that 
the speech is put into his mouth by the nar- 
rator, and actually exhibits a Jewish tradi- 
tion, worthy of notice as the oldest on this 



'subject which exists in writing. Its in- 
formation is not at variance wii i cuat which 
the Scriptures give, while it coincides, in 
substance, with the later statements of 
Josephus, and with the resulting effect of 
the less authentic traditions and tales of the 
Jews and Arabians. 

We see, then, that all accounts out of 
Scripture, and not therein disagreeing with 
Scripture, state that Abram was of purer 
faith than his countrymen, and on that 
account left or was obliged to leave his 
native land. This may be true or not ; for 
although Scripture states his proceeding as 
the result of an immediate command from 
Heaven — we know not, from the same au- 
thority, what previous enlightenments, what 
line of conduct, what difficulties, what past 
or present, thoughts, prepared the patriarch 
to receive and to be guided by the Divine 
command. There were such doubtless ; and 
even the command has the tone less of an 
original suggestion than of an authoritative 
interposition to decide a question which 
"the father of the faithful" had enter- 
tained, but found it difficult to determine. 

It is not clear from Scripture that the 
father and surviving brother of Abram had 
by this time been brought over to his reli- 
gious views. Its slight intimations seem to 
imply that they had not: nor does their 
going with him, when he departed from Ur 
of the Chaldees in obedience to the heavenly 
call, necessarily imply their participation in 
his religious sentiments, since various other 
considerations are supposable which might 
have influenced them, and they might even 
have recognised the authority of that 
Divine Being who spoke to Abram to direct 
his and even their own course, without 
being convinced, as Abram was, of his 
exclusive claim to honour and obedience. 

So the whole house of Terah departed 
with Abram from the land of the Chaldees, 
and proceeded until they arrived at 
"Haran," or, more properly, "Charran" (as 
in Acts vii. 2), where, for some cause not 
declared to us — but probably the increasing 
infirmities of Terah, together with the 
temptations of a rich pastoral district for 
their flocks and herds — they were induced 



24 

to abide many years. After fifteen years, 
the father of Abram died in Haran, at the 
then reasonable old age of 205 years. 

Abram was then at the ripe middle age of 
seventy-five years, when the Divine com- 
mand, made to him fifteen years before, was 
renewed, with a slight but significant varia- 
tion of its terms. The first command 
required him to leave his country and his 
kindred, or his natural connections, in the 
general sense, and was not considered neces- 
sarily to involve a separation from his 
immediate family ; but the second call was 
more precise and stringent, requiring him to 
leave not only his country and his kindred, 
but also his " father's house." The Divine 
intentions being confined to his posterity, 
which as yet had no existence — for he had' 
no child, his wife being barren — it was 
judged right to isolate him completely from 
all such natural and social ties as might 
interfere with this object. This was hard to 
bear, and God knew that it was ; and, there- 
fore, although it was designed that his faith 
should be tried to the uttermost, and made 
manifest as an example to his posterity and 
to the people of future ages and distant 
lands, these trials did not come upon him in 
one overwhelming demand, but were made 
successive, after intervals of repose, — rising 
one upon another, as his trust grew pro- 
gressively stronger in that Great Being, the 
special object of whose care he had become. 
We shall see this throughout the history of 
this patriarch. 

When the patriarch received his first call, 
the circumstances in which he was then 
placed, and the privilege of being still 
permitted to remain with all those who 
were, by natural ties, dearest to him, pro- 
bably made the commanded migration in- 
different or even desirable to him, and 
therefore no promises with reference to the 
future are held forth to encourage his 
obedience. But now, when he seems to 
have been more prosperously and happily 
situated, saving the recent grief of his 
father's death, the command to depart is 
accompanied, for the first time, by that high 
promise which was destined to cheer and 

bless his remaining life. This call and the 
. 



[book I. 

annexed promise are thus given in the 
scriptural narrative : — " Then the Lord said 
unto Abram, Depart from thy land, and 
from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
house, unto the land which I will shew thee. 
And I will make of thee a great nation, and 
I will bless thee and make thy name great, 
and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will 
bless them that bless thee, and curse them 
that curse thee; and in thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed." (Gen. xii. 
1—3.)* 

The land to which he was to go is not 
named, either on this or the former occasion ; 
but the difference in the form of expression 
may have sufficed to intimate to Abram, 
that the country appointed for his sojourning 
would now be more distinctly indicated to 
him. 

So Abram separated himself from the 
household of Nahor, his only surviving 
brother, and departed, not at that time 
knowing the point of his ultimate destina- 
tion, but relying upon the guidance of the 
Divine Being whose command he was obey- 
ing. Lot, the son of his dead brother 
Haran, and brother to his wife Sarai, joined 
himself to him. For this no reason is given, 
but may be found in the fact, that, while 
Abram remained without issue, Lot was 
his natural heir; besides, it appears that 
Lot entertained an exclusive belief in the 
God of Abram, which there is some ground 
for suspecting that Nahor and his household 
did not. Lot had a household and property 
of his own, and the united parties must have 
formed a goodly pastoral company, such as 
may still be often met with crossing the 
plains and deserts of the east in search of 
new pastures. We are told that they went 
forth " and all their substance that they had 
gathered, and the souls that they had gotten 
in Haran," which last clause applies to the 
" little ones" of their households — being the 
children which had been born of their slaves 
during the fifteen years of their stay in 
Haran. 

Those who are, from reading or travelled 
observation, conversant with the existing 

* The passage is here given as translated by Dr. Hales, 
more precisely than in our public version. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



25 



manners of the Asiatic pastoral tribes, — as 
the Arabians and the Tartars, — can easily 
form in their minds a picture of this great 
migrating party. Under the conduct of 
their venerable emir, and the active direc- 
tion and control of his principal servants, 
we behold, from the distance, a lengthened 
dark line stretching across the plain, or 
winding among the valleys, or creeping 
down the narrow pathway on the mountain- 
side. That in this line there are hosts of 
camels we know afar off, by the grotesque 
outline which the figures of these animals 
make, their tall shapes and their length of 
neck ; and that the less distinguishable mass 
which appears in motion on the surface of 
the ground is composed of flocks of sheep, 
and. perhaps goats, we can only infer from 
circumstances. On approaching nearer we 
find that all this is true, and that, moreover, 
many of the camels are laden with the 
tents, and with the few utensils and need- 
ments which the dwellers in tents recpuire ; 
and, if the natural condition of the traversed 
country be such as to render the precaution 
necessary, some of the animals may be seen 
bearing provisions and skins of water. The 
baggage-camels follow each other with 
steady and heavy tread, in files, the halter 
of those that follow being tied to the harness 
of those that precede, so that the foremost 
only needs a rider to direct his course ; but 
nevertheless women, children, and old men 
are seen mounted on the other burdens 
which some of them bear. These are slaves, 
retainers, and other persons not actively 
engaged in the conduct of the party, and 
not of sufficient consequence to ride on 
saddled dromedaries. Such are reserved 
for the chiefs of the party, their women, 
children, relatives, and friends, and are not, 
unless it happen for convenience, strung 
together like the drudging animals which 
bear the heavier burdens. 

For the youths and men of vigorous age, 
the slaves and shepherds, there is active 
employment in directing the orderly pro- 
gress of the flocks, and in correcting the 
irregularities, friskings, and breaches which 
sometimes occur. In this service they are 
assisted by a stout staff, crooked at one end, 



— the origin of the pastoral and episcopal 
crook, — which, however, is but sparingly 
used by those most accustomed to the flocks, 
their familiar voices being in general quite 
sufficient to control and "guide the sheep ; 
and of their voices they make no stinted 
use, but exert them liberally in the in- 
cessant utterance of loud cries and shouts, 
reproaches, warnings, and encouragements. 
The feeble of the flock are very tenderly 
dealt with ; the progress of the whole is but 
slow, on account of the lambs, and the ewes 
great with young; and some of the shep- 
herds may be seen bearing in their arms the 
weaker lambs of the flock, or those which 
had been lately yeaned. The men engaged 
in these services are on foot, though a few 
of the principal may be on camels, or, pre- 
ferably, on asses, if there be any of those 
animals in the troop. The whole conduct of 
the Oriental shepherds supplies many beau- 
tiful allusions and metaphors to the sacred 
writers of the Hebrews, — as where the pro- 
phet says that the good shepherd " shall 
gather the lambs with his arm, and carry 
them in his bosom, and shall gently lead 
those that are with young." (Isa. xl. 11.) 

We have introduced this short description 
of the pastoral migrations with the view of 
enabling the reader to form some idea not 
only of this migration of Abram and Lot, 
but of the various other removals which are 
so frequently mentioned in the history of the 
pastoral patriarchs. 

Nicolas of Damascus, an ancient author 
cited by Josephus, states that Abram, coming 
from the country of the Chaldeans, which is 
above Babylon*, with a large company, tarried 
for a season at Damascus, and reigned there, 
before he went into the land of Canaan. He 
adds that the name of Abram continued to 
be very famous in all the region of Damascus, 
in which there was a place still called Beth- 
Abram (the house of Abram). Justin, in his 
extravagant account of the origin of the 
J ews, also numbers Abram among the kings 
of Damascus f. There is nothing in Scrip- 

* A valuable geographical intimation this, by the way, 
showing how the name " Chaldee," and "land of the 
Chaldeans," was anciently applied. 

t Nicol. Damascen. in Joseph, lib. i. c. 8 ; and in Euseb. 
• Prsepar.' lib. ix. c. 16; Justin, lib. xxxvi. c. 4. 



[~26 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book I. 



tare to countenance this story, which is pro- 
bably based on some tradition that Abram 
encamped for a while near Damascus, in 
his way to Canaan : even this we do not 
know ; but it seems not unlikely, as that 
city lay on the most convenient route from 
Haran to the land of Canaan, and as the 
subsequently favoured domestic of the pa- 
triarch, whom he on one occasion describes 
as having been " born in his house," is, in 
another, called by him Eliezer of Damascus. 

The history in Genesis gives us no account 
of this journey, which is the same afterwards 
made by Jacob, and the longest ever made 
by the Hebrew patriarchs. We are only told, 
with inimitable brevity, that " they went 
forth to go into the land of Canaan ; and 
into the land of Canaan they came." It 
would, to us, have been interesting to follow 
the route which was on this occasion taken. 
But, in our existing want of information, it 
is only necessary to observe that some writers 
tell us needlessly of the frightful deserts 
which Abram crossed in this journey. But 
we need not necessarily conclude that the 
present great desert of Syria was a desert 
then. And, if it were, seeing that flocks of 
sheep cannot, like a herd of camels, be con- 
ducted across a parched desert, destitute of 
herbage and of water, as the deserts of 
Syria and Arabia are, during summer, it will 
follow that the transit was made, if at all, 
in the early spring, when, from the recent 
winter and vernal rains, the Syrian desert, 
at least in its northern part, becomes a rich 
prairie, covered with fragrant and nutritive 
herbage. But no situation which has been 
assigned to Haran requires that the patri- 
arch should at all cross this desert in jour- 
neying thence to the land of Canaan. 
Proceeding westward from beyond the 
Euphrates, he would skirt this desert on the 
north, and then, turning southward, he would 
follow the course of the mountains which 
border it on the west, being with little in- 
terruption most of the way in the enjoyment 
of the fine pastures and abundant waters of 
the plains and valleys which border, or are 
involved among, the Syrian mountains. 

Arriving at last in the land of Canaan, 
the patriarch was arrested by the rich pas- 



tures of Samaria, near the mountains of Ebal 
and Gerizim ; and in the beautiful valley of 
Moreh, which lies between these mountains, 
and where the city of Shechem was not long 
after founded, Abram formed his first en- 
campment in the land. 

Not long after his arrival, the Lord 
favoured the patriarch with a more distinct 
intimation of his intentions than any which 
he had hitherto received, by the promise 
that he would bestow on his posterity the 
land into which he had come. From this 
time forward Abram and the other patriarchs 
were constantly taught to regard the land of 
Canaan as the future heritage of their 
children. 

Abram testified his gratitude and adora- 
tion by building there an altar unto 
Jehovah, who had appeared unto him. We 
are by this instructed that Abram even then 
knew God by this his high and peculiar 
name — that mystic name on which many 
have so largely written, and on which not a 
few deep, or ingenious, or simply absurd, 
speculations have been founded by Chris- 
tians and by Jews *, 

As this is the first act of religious service 
which is mentioned in the patriarchal his- 
tory, and, indeed, the first recorded siuce the 
act of worship and sacrifice pertormed by 
Noah when he came forth from the ark, it 
deserves to be attentively considered. It is 
observable that we meet with no mention of 
temples or ecclesiastical structures in this 
age. The Sabsean idolaters, from among 
whom it appears that Abram came, did not, 
until a very long subsequent age, worship 
their gods in temples made with hands, but 
presented their offerings and sacrifices upon 
altars erected in the open air. Our informa- 
tion concerning the religious practices of the 
Canaanites is little more than negative ; but 
there is nothing in the Scriptures or in the 
civil or religious state of society in this early 
age, which renders it probable that they, or 

* Most Christian translators of the Old Testament, 
including our own, generally abstain from introducing the 
name in their versions, putting " the Lord " instead of 
Jehovah, in this following the example of the Jews, who, 
to avoid any attempt to pronounce the Name, read Adonai, 
instead of it ; and of the Seventy, who sat down the word 
Kvgtos in lieu of it. 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM, 



even the inhabitants of Egypt, had buildings 
set apart for religious service. Egypt pro- 
bably had the first temples : and from history 
we should infer that the earliest in at least 
Lower Egypt — which alone is the Egypt of 
the early Scriptures — was that at Heliopolis : 
and, through the measure of progress which 
has been made in deciphering the sculptured 
hieroglyphics of the old Egyptian monu- 
ments, we now know that this temple was 
originally founded by the first Osirtasen, 
upwards of three centuries later than the 
time now under our notice. This monarch 
also built a temple in the province of Croco- 
dilopolis : but before his time, this new 
branch of learning has not ascertained that 
any temples existed in Egypt*. It may 
seem, therefore, that the practice of the 
patriarchs to render their religious rites at 
an open "ltar was the general practice of 
their time. It appears that they erected an 
altar of heaped stones, or earth, at every 
place where they purposed to remain en- 
camped any considerable time, as well as at 
other places where God vouchsafed to mani- 
fest his presence to them. And many were 
the memorials of this kind — altars dedicated 
to Jehovah — which the Hebrew fathers 
erected, at different places, while they were 
"strangers and sojourners" in the Promised 
Land. We think it may be collected that at 
such altars sacrifices were not regularly or 
periodically offered, but only on extraordi- 
nary occasions ; but the facts which the 
Scriptures furnish concerning the religious 
observances of the patriarchs are few, and 
these few it may be best to notice as they 
occur. 

It may further be observed, that in all the 
patriarchal history there is not, in any na- 
tion, the mention of a priest — unless it be in 
the singular instance of Melchizedek, which 
will presently engage our notice. Besides 

* See Wilkinson's ' Ancient Egyptians,' vol. i., chap. 2. 
This valuable writer, in his historical chapters, furnishes 
some very important Egyptian dates and facts, which will 
be useful to us; but as, in his references to supposed con- 
temporary incidents in Jewish history, he makes use of the 
common Usherian chronology, which we do not, we shall 
be obliged to make our own applications and conclusions. 
In the present instance he necessarily allows no more than 
an interval of 180 years between Abraham's visit to Egypt 
and the reign of Osirtasen I. 



this, the first distinct mention of priests as a 
body of men set apart for the service of re- 
ligion, occurs, like that of temples, in Egypt, 
a good while after the times which now 
engage our attention. Priests, however, no 
doubt existed before temples ; and under 
some complications of religious service, with 
w r hich we are unacquainted, they may have 
existed in the time of Abram. In the patri- 
archal practice, however, which appears to 
have been that in general use, the functions 
which were in after times considered priestly 
appear to have been discharged by the eldest, 
or first-born of the family, and that this 
indeed was considered one of the most 
valuable privileges of his seniority. Our 
Talmudical information on this subject is in 
entire conformity with Scripture. It tells 
us that, before the tabernacle was erected, 
private altars and high places were in use 
for sacrifice. When the children of a family 
were to offer a sacrifice, then the father was 
the priest : but when the sons of a family 
were met together to offer sacrifice after they 
came to be themselves fathers of houses, 
having families of their own, and were sepa- 
rated from their father and their father's 
house — their father not being present with 
them — then the eldest son was the priest or 
sacrificer for himself and his brethren f. 

A pastoral chief has no other alternatives 
than either to remove frequently to the new 
pastures which his flocks and herds require, 
or, retaining his household long in one place, 
to send forth his flocks, under the charge of 
trusty persons, to distant pastures. The 
former was the course which Abram took. 
His next recorded removal was about twenty- 
four miles from the plain of Moreh, south- 
ward, towards the vale of Siddim, where the 
valleys of the hilly country north of the 
plain of Jericho offer fine and luxuriant pas- 
turage. In this district the patriarch pitched 
his tent near a mountain on the east of the 
place then called Luz, but to which, in a 
later day, Jacob gave the name of Bethel. 
There also the patriarch " built an altar to 
Jehovah, and called upon the name of 
Jehovah." 

f Tract. Melikim in Mishna, 14; ' Bereshith Rabba, 
fol. 7, cited in Shuckford, book v. p. 255. 



28 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book L 



When the exhaustion of the pasturages ren- 
dered further removals necessary, we learn 
that his progress was southward. 

In those days there arose a famine in the 
land of Canaan, doubtless caused — as scarcity 
usually is caused in that country — by one or 
more seasons of excessive drought. It is the 
peculiar felicity of Egypt that its soil does 
not need local rains to awaken its productive 
powers, which are called into most vigorous 
operation by the periodical overflowings of 
the river Nile. There may be scarcity even 
in Egypt, for the river sometimes fails of its 
due redundance ; but this happens but 
rarely, and when it does occur, the causes 
which produce it are to be found in the 
droughts of that remote country in which 
the river rises, or which it traverses in the 
early part of its course. But as these 're- 
mote droughts which stint the water of the 
Nile and produce scarcities in Egypt — which 
has itself no adequate rains in its lower 
country, and none in its upper, to compensate 
for this want — are seldom so extensive as to 
have any serious influence in the countries 
which border on that land in which the river 
terminates its course, it follows that there is 
seldom any coincidence between the scarcities 
of Western Asia and those which occur, with 
comparative rarity, in Egypt. Thus that 
singular country has, in all ages, been re- 
garded as the granary of Western Asia, not 
only from the extraordinary fertility pro- 
duced by the periodical inundation of its 
soil, but from the circumstance that it might 
be expected to furnish a supply of corn at 
the very time when other countries were con- 
sumed with famine-producing droughts. 

It is interesting to learn that this was the 
state of matters in the time of the patriarchs, 
who on all occasions looked towards Egypt, 
whenever a scarcity of corn was experienced 
in the land of Canaan. 

So now, Abram, being in the south of the 
Promised Land, heard that there was corn in 
Egypt, and determined to proceed thither with 
his household. Josephus adds that he also 
wished to ascertain the religious sentiments 
of the Egyptians, and to teach them or to be 
taught by them ; which is consistent enough 
with the traditionary history of Abram's 



earlier life, but has no warrant in Scrip- 
ture. 

Arriving on the borders of Egypt, the 
patriarch had an opportunity of making com- 
parisons between the Egyptian women and 
his own wife, greatly to the advantage of the 
latter. She appears to have been a very 
fine woman ; and, under the present circum- 
stances, her comparatively fresh complexion, 
as a native of Mesopotamia, gained by the 
contrast with the dusky hue of the Egyptian 
females. It is true that Sarai was at this 
time sixty-five years of age ; but this age is 
not to be estimated by the present standard 
of life, but according to the standard which 
then existed, by which the wife of Abram 
could not seem to her contemporaries of more 
advanced age than a woman of thirty or 
thirty-five appears to us. 

Knowing the attraction of his wife's 
beauty, and being perhaps aware of some 
recent circumstances in Egypt which were 
calculated to awaken his apprehensions for 
the result, the heart of Abram failed him, in 
the very point in which the hearts of all 
men are more weak and tender than in any 
other, and he resolved to take shelter under 
an equivocation. He therefore said to his 
wife, — " Behold now, I know that thou art a 
fair woman to look upon : therefore it shall 
come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see 
thee, that they shall say, 1 This is his wife :' 
and they will kill me, but they will save 
thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my 
sister : that it may be well with me for thy 
sake, and my soul shall live because of thee." 
(Gen. xii. 11, 13.) This was accordingly 
done ; and we are instructed by this, and 
other similar incidents, that the men who 
figure in the history before us as the best 
and holiest in aggregate character, were not 
such immaculate representatives of ideal 
perfection as shine in common history and 
romance, but are true human beings, " com- 
passed about with infirmities," as all men 
are, and tempted, as all men are, by their 
passions, doubts, or fears ; and by such 
temptation too often drawn aside from the 
right path. The whole of the sacred book 
offers to us not a single character exempt 
from temptation ; and it tells us of only 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



29 



One -whom all temptation left "without 
sin." 

It appears that Abram did not over-esti- 
mate the effect which the beauty of Sarai 
was likely to produce upon the sensitive 
Egyptians. The attractions of the fair Meso- 
potamian stranger were speedily discovered, 
and became the theme of many tongues. She 
was at last seen by some of " the princes of 
Pharaoh ;" and the report of her beauty be- 
coming, through them, the talk of the court, 
soon reached the ears of the Egyptian king. 

In Europe the tendency of civilization is 
to procure increased respect from the govern- 
ing powers for the personal liberties and 
privileges of the people, and for the rights 
of property and the sanctities of private life ; 
but this rule has ever been reversed in the 
east, where the most civilized nations have 
always been those in which the natural im- 
munities of man have been the least regarded, 
and in which no natural or social privilege 
existed on which the sovereign despotism 
might not, if it so pleased, lay its iron hand 
freely. Here we have a very early instance 
of this. Egypt had doubtless at this time 
reached a higher point of civilizaticn than 
any other country of which the sacred his- 
tory takes notice — and here we read of the 
first act of despotism which that history re- 
cords. Abram was, in the first place, afraid 
that he should be slain for the sake of his 
wife, for which reason he reported her as his 
sister ; but no sooner did the reputation of 
the beauty of this alleged sister of a powerful 
emir — a stranger taking refuge in the coun- 
try — arrive at the ears of its sovereign, than 
he sent to demand her for his harem. This 
is what the sovereigns of the most "civilized " 
oriental states often do, as a matter of royal 
right, when stimulated by the sight or 
rumour of a beautiful female among the 
sisters or daughters of their subjects ; and the 
present case is a remarkable evidence of the 
early existence of this most offensive privi- 
lege of oriental despotism. It is evident 
that the patriarch had no appeal from the 
authority which made this grievous demand ; 
and yet could not himself have been a 
willingly consenting party. That Abram was 
not the subject of the Egyptian king, but a 



newly-arrived stranger of distinction, ren- 
dered this a still stronger act of despotic 
power than it might otherwise have seemed ; 
and it was probably from this consideration 
that Pharaoh sought to pacify or propitiate 
the patriarch by making him valuable pre- 
sents, suitable to his condition as a pastoral 
chief — such as "sheep, and oxen, and he- 
asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, 
and she-asses, and camels." Some reflection 
has been made upon the conduct of Abram 
in accepting these presents ; but those who 
are acquainted with the usages of the east 
know that he dared not refuse them. 

So Sarai was taken to the house of 
Pharaoh. This lamentable result of his 
weak equivocation did not so far rouse the 
patriarch's faith or courage as to make him 
avow the actual relationship between her 
and himself. But at this juncture it pleased 
God to interfere to prevent the evil con- 
sequences, which human means could not 
well have averted, by inflicting on Pharaoh 
and his house " great plagues because of 
Sarai, Abram's wife." What these plagues 
were we are not clearly told ; but probably 
some grievous disease, of such a nature as, 
joined to some intimation to that effect, 
rendered it manifest to him that the in- 
fliction was intended to prevent or punish 
his designs upon the wife of another man. 
On this, the king sent for Abram, and after 
rebuking him with some severity for the 
dissimulation of his conduct, which had 
placed all parties in a dangerous position, 
desired him to take his wife and leave the 
country, at the same time giving orders to 
his people to facilitate his departure. 

Seeing that the early condition of Egypt 
is a subject of great historical interest in 
itself, as well as from the early connection of 
the Hebrews with that country, the visit of 
Abram to it awakens our curiosity, and 
makes us studious to collect all the informa- 
tion which the account of that visit fur- 
nishes or indicates. The facts are few com- 
pared with those which transpire at a sub- 
sequent date ; but these few are valuable. 

We observe, in the first place, that this 
visit of Abram settles the question whether 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[ BOOK I 



this, the lower part of Egypt, was then dry. 
It was dry, and inhabited by an industrious 
agricultural population, who extracted from 
the soil so much more food than sufficed for 
their own subsistence, that, as previously 
noted, the country had already become the 
asylum of those who were oppressed by 
famine in other countries. 

The impression which the account of the 
transactions in which Abram was engaged in 
Egypt affords, is very different from that 
which we receive from the account of his 
dealings with the petty sovereigns and states 
of Canaan. With them, Abram and the 
other patriarchs treat very much as with 
equals — as in the instances of the kings of 
Siddim, the king of Gerar, and "the children 
of Heth," not to mention the comparatively 
late instance of the affair between Jacob's 
family and the prince and people of Shechem. 
In all these cases the patriarchs are treated 
with deference and respect ; and give free 
utterance to their sentiments, even those 
likely to be most unpalatable. But before 
Pharaoh, Abram, when reproved by him, 
answers not a word ; and if the royal gifts 
which he received from the king of Egypt 
testified the consideration to which the 
foreign emir was entitled, it was the con- 
sideration of a superior to one whom he 
wished to benefit. We direct attention the 
rather to this circumstance, as Abram had a 
feeling in the matter of presents which led 
him, on every other occasion with which we 
are acquainted, to decline those which were 
offered to him ; for which, on one of those 
occasions, he assigns to the king of Sodom 
the dignified reason, — " I will not take any- 
thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, 
' I have made Abram rich.' " 

In short, the idea which we derive from 
the account of this remarkable affair, is that 
Lower Egypt was even then a great and 
flourishing kingdom, ruled by a powerful 
and magnificent monarch, invested with 
many of the characteristics by which an 
oriental despotism has in all ages been 
distinguished, and surrounded by courtiers, 
who made it their prime object to minister 
to his tastes and passions. It will also be 
noted that this monarch was thus early dis- | 



tinguished by the title of Phrah, or, as we 
spell it, Pharaoh, which in all subsequent 
ages was borne by the native sovereigns of 
Egypt, and which is the Egyptian name foi 
the sun, applied by way of eminence to him 
whom his subjects regarded as the chief of 
men. It may, moreover, not be unimportant 
to observe that slavery existed at this time 
in Egypt, as it did also in other countries. 
This is shown by Pharaoh's gift — men-slaves 
and women-slaves — to Abram ; and if, as 
might be suggested, a foreign dynasty ruled 
then in Egypt, it is not impossible that at 
least some of these slaves may have been 
native Egyptians. Hagar " the bondwoman," 
of whom we shall presently read, was pro- 
bably one of these women-slaves ; and she 
is called an " Egyptian." 

It would be a valuable piece of information 
to know what king or dynasty reigned in 
Egypt at the time of Abram's visit. But 
the sacred narrative does not mention any 
king of Egypt by his proper name till after 
the time of Solomon ; and the Egyptian 
chronology at, and for some time after, this 
early date is still involved in much uncer- 
tainty and confusion, notwithstanding the 
light which has been thrown on the general 
subject by the progress made in deciphering 
the hieroglyphic inscriptions. But all the 
information from this source which has 
lately transpired, or with which further 
inquiry has made us acquainted, tends 
greatly to confirm the view of the matter 
which we have had occasion to state in 
another place *, 

One of the best established facts in the 
very early history of Egypt is, that its lower 
country was for a long series of years (260) 
under the dominion of a race of pastoral 
nomades, while the upper country continued 
subject to the native sovereigns. This great 
fact has abundance of incidental confirma- 
tion, although many particulars which it 
might be most desirable to know remain in 
obscurity, and among these is the date at 
which the pastoral dominion in Egypt com- 
menced or terminated. In the work to which 
we have referred, we have shown the strong 
probability that it had been put an end to 

* 'Pictorial Bible,' note upon Exod. i. 8. 



I HAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



31 



before the time of Joseph ; and in confirma- 
! tion of this we may now adduce the testi- 
mony of Mr. Wilkinson, who, from the state 
of the earliest monuments, and from the 
information which they afford, conceives that 
the irruption of the pastors was anterior to 
the erection of any building now extant in 
Egypt, and long before the accession of the 
17th dynasty*, that is, in the earlier periods 
of Egyptian history, previous to the era of 
Osirtasen I. The monuments of that monarch 
satisfactorily prove that in his reign and that 
of his second successor, the Egyptians had 
already extended their conquests over some 
of the tribes of Asia, and were consequently 
free from any enemies within their own 
valley t. This writer also suggests, as a 
question, whether the dominion of the shep- 
herd-kings, as they are called, in Egypt, may 
not have been overthrown by this Osirtasen. 
Now this king was, as Mr. Wilkinson con- 
ceives, coeval with Joseph, and must, at 
least, have been nearly so ; and it is not a 
little remarkable that in concluding, from 
the evidence of monuments, that the pastor- 
kings were expelled before the accession of 
Osirtasen I., he obtains exactly the same 
conclusion as that to which Hales and Faber 
arrived, when, on purely historical data, 
they conceived that this great change took 
place before, but not long before, Joseph was 
^made governor of Egypt ; Hales fixing it 
about the year 1885 B.C. This coincidence 
of independent testimony, taking different 
lines of evidence, is very important ; and its 
use for our present purpose is, that if the 
pastoral dynasty was extinguished before the 
time of Joseph's exaltation, it must have 
existed at the time of Abram's visit to 
Egypt, 185 years before, seeing that the con- 
quering nomades occupied the country 260 
years. No one supposes that their dominion 
had terminated before the visit of Abram ; 
and that it had not, is indirectly evinced by 
the sacred narrative itself. In the time of 
Joseph's government every nomade shepherd 

* The 17th dynasty commenced b.c. 1651, and was intro- 
duced by Osirtasen IT. The first Osirtasen belonged to the 
16th dynasty, and Wilkinson thinks he began to reign 
about r.c. 1740, and reigned forty-three years. 

t Wilkinson, vol.'. eh. 1. 



was detested at the Egyptian court, in con- 
sequence of the oppressive and humiliating 
dominion which a race of pastors had 
exercised in the country. Of this we hear 
nothing in the time of Abram ; although, if 
this race had then recently been expelled, 
the manifestations of that hatred must have 
been more manifest and lively in his time 
than nearly two centuries later. The result 
of all these considerations tends to intimate 
that one of the shepherd kings reigned in 
Lower Egypt at the time of Abram's journey 
to that country ; and this conclusion, while 
it serves to explain some differing circum- 
stances which we find in the Egyptian court 
as described in the respective times of Abram 
and Joseph, throws considerable light upon 
the picture which, from these accounts, the 
mind forms of both ; and more especially 
illustrates the fact that, while the family of 
Jacob found favour at the court of Egypt, 
and was admitted into the country only for 
the sake of Joseph, Abram found no difficulty 
of access to the country, and was treated 
with consideration by the court in that very 
character — as a pastoral chief — which was 
regarded with abomination by the native 
government of a later day. 

The fragments of Manetho intimate that 
the conquering nomades, while in occupation 
of Egypt, gradually adapted themselves to 
the customs and practices of the native 
Egyptians, while they were careful to main- 
tain their alliance with their kindred tribes 
of the desert. And as this process of adap- 
tation must have been in operation not less 
than seventy-five years, at the time now 
under our notice, we need not wonder that 
the reigning king bore the Egyptian sove- 
reign title of Pharaoh, and that the external 
aspect of the court was probably not very 
different to what it might have been under 
a native prince ; always excepting the sym- 
pathy between it and the desert nomades, as 
contrasted with the hatred of the ensuing 
native dynasties towards the same race of 
people. 

The degree of attention which has here 
been given to this interesting subject, while 
not unsuitably subjoined to the notice of 
Abram's sojourn in Egypt, forms a necessary 



32 



! introduction to the whole history of the 
Hebrew intercourse with that country. 

By the time that the patriarch returned 
from Egypt to the land of Canaan, the 
scarcity which had driven him thence appears 
to hare ceased. He retraced his steps 
through the southern part of the country, 
and at last arrived at the place between 
Bethel and Hai where his tents had been 
before ; and at the altar which he had for- 
merly built upon one of the neighbouring 
hills he again enjoyed the satisfaction of 
" calling upon the name of Jehovah." 

Since Abram and Lot were formerly en- 
camped in the same place, their substance 
had been greatly increased. We are now 
told that " Abram was very rich in cattle, 
in silver, and in gold." The royal gifts of 
the king of Egypt had, no doubt, contributed 
considerably to the increase of his previous 
stock of cattle ; and as the precious metals 
are mentioned among the articles of his 
wealth immediately on his return from 
Egypt, they were most likely obtained in the 
same country, either by the gift of the king 
or from the sale of the produce of his flocks 
to the towns-people. This is, indeed, the 
first occasion on which the precious metals 
are mentioned, in all history, as articles of 
property and wealth— that is, as shown by 
subsequent transactions — as the representa- 
tives of value. Lot, who had hitherto been 
the constant companion of Abram's migra- 
tions, was also rich, having great possessions 
of " flocks, and herds, and tents." That he 
also is not said to possess silver and gold is a 
rather remarkable omission, and may be 
significant. 

Their united pastoral wealth was so great 
that it became manifest that the two parties 
could not remain together much longer. 
There is not, indeed, any scarcity of water in 
the district in which they were then en- 
camped ; but the land unappropriated by 
the Canaanites in that part of the country 
was insufficient to furnish free pasture to all 
their flocks and herds ; and hence quarrels 
about the choice and rights of pasture arose 
between the shepherds of Abram and Lot, 
who were probably more zealous about the 



[book i 

| separate interests and rights of their masters 
than they were themselves. Lot, however, 
does not in his general character appear tc 
I have been at all indifierent to his own in- 
terests ; and the generous and disinterested 
proposal which Abram made to prevent all 
future difference or difficulty, looks very 
much like an answer from him to some 
remonstrance or complaint Avhich his nephew 
had been making. He said, " Let there be 
no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, 
and between my herdmen and thy herdmen ; 
for we be brethren. Is not the whole land 
before thee ? Separate thyself, I pray thee, 
from me : if thou wilt take the left hand, 
then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart 
to the right hand, then I will go to the left." 
In the life of a Bedouin pastor, the conces- 
sion of a choice of pasturage to another 
chief is the most extraordinary act of gene- 
rosity which he can possibly show, in con- 
sequence of the large interests which are 
involved ; and, under all the circumstances, 
it becomes almost sublime when the claims 
of the party to whom the concession is made 
to the right of selection are only equal, or, as 
in the present case, inferior to those of the 
conceder. An English grazier may have 
some idea of this, but it is only by a Bedouin 
that it can be fully appreciated. 

Lot made no scruple of availing himself of 
the advantage which his uncle's liberal pro- 
posal gave to him. From the heights on 
which they stood, the vale of Siddim offered 
a most inviting prospect. It was well 
watered everywhere — which alone is a great 
advantage to the possessor of flocks and 
herds — which, with the exuberant vegetation 
which resulted from it, with the prospect of 
fair cities here and there, gave it the aspect 
of a terrestrial paradise. The low, broad, 
and warm valley, fertilized by the fine river 
which passed through it, also suggested a 
resemblance to the rich valley of the Nile, 
from which they had lately come. Lot, be- 
holding all this, made choice of all the plain 
of the Jordan for his pasture-ground, and 
soon after removed to it with all his posses- 
sions. We are told that "he pitched his 
tent toward Sodom" — or made the neigh- 
bourhood of that city his head-quarters, not 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



33 



probably caring so muck as Abram might 
have done about the depraved character of 
the inhabitants ; for he could not well have 
been ignorant of the fact that the men of 
Sodom were notoriously " wicked and sinners 
before the Lord exceedingly." 

Now at last, by the operation of circum- 
stances, without any immediate command 
from God, Abram was brought to that state 
of complete isolation from all his natural 
connections which the Divine purpose, to 
preserve his future race apart and unmixed, 
rendered necessary. But although this pre- 
sent separation, which left the patriarch, 
more completely than before, alone in a 
strange land, was not immediately caused by 
the Divine interposition, no sooner had Lot 
taken his departure than the Lord again 
manifested his presence to Abram, to cheer 
and encourage him by the renewal, in more 
distinct terms, of the promises formerly 
made to him. To the childless man was pro- 
mised a posterity countless as the dust — the 
future inheritors of the land in which he 
dwelt — which land he was now directed to 
traverse, in its length and breadth, to survey 
the goodly heritage of his children, and to 
take, as it were, possession of it in their 
behalf. 

In obedience to this direction, Abram 
broke up his camp near Bethel and departed, 
proceeding first towards the south. His 
next encampment was formed about a mile 
from the town of Arba (afterwards called 
Hebron), in the fair and fertile valley of 
Mature, where he pitched his tent under a 
terebinth tree, which became in after ages 
famous for his sake. 

The patriarch was still at this place when 
his history brings us acquainted with the 
first warlike transaction of which any record 
remains. 

It appears that, in this age, the Assyrian 
power predominated in Western Asia ; and 
we should not wonder if it be ultimately 
discovered that even the " Shepherd-kings " 
of Egypt were Assyrian viceroys, which dis- 
covery would throw great light on several 
circumstances in the lives of the patriarchs- 
Be this as it may, we learn that, some years 
before the date at which we are now arrived, 



an Assyrian force had crossed the Euphrates, 
and made extensive conquests in Syria. This 
force appears to have been composed of de- 
tachments from the several small nations or 
tribes which composed or were subject to the 
j Assyrian empire, each commanded by its own 
j melech or petty king. Of these kings, one 
j named " Chedorlaomer, king of Elam," pro- 
j bably Elymais, appears to have been left 
| viceroy of the conquests west of the Eu- 
phrates. This chief, in the end, resolved to 
carry his arms southward, and with this 
object took with him, not only the warriors 
drawn from his own clan, but those com- 
manded by three other of such "kings," 
namely, Amraphel, king of Shinar (or Baby- 
lonia) ; Arioch, king of Ellasar ; and another 
called Tidal, who, from his title, "king of 
Ooim," or, if we translate the word, " of 
peoples," may seem to have ruled a mixed 
people or union of small tribes. Although 
the history only requires the mention of the 
vale of Siddim, we think it wrong to infer 
from thence that no other district of southern 
Syria was involved in the consequences of 
this expedition. The intermediate country, 
particularly on the coast of the Jordan and 
the country beyond, possessed by the Horini of 
Mount Seir, probably experienced its effects, 
although we only read that the four com- 
manders made war with the five petty kings 
of the plain, being Bera, king of Sodom ; 
Birsha, king of Gomorrah ; Shinab, king of 
Admah ; Shember, king of Zeboim ; and 
the unnamed king of Bela, afterwards called 
Zoar. Being defeated, these five kings were 
made tributary to Chedorlaomer, whom we 
have supposed to have been viceroy of the 
Assyrian conquests west of the Euphrates ; 
and in this state of subjection they remained 
twelve years. But, in the thirteenth year, 
some unrecorded circumstances encouraged 
the kings of the plain to withhold their tri- 
bute, in which act we may reasonably con- 
clude that other districts of southern Syria 
concurred. The year following, Chedor- 
laomer and the kings that were with him 
undertook a new expedition to punish the 
revolters ; and that they did not proceed at 
once against the kings of the plain, but went 
to the countries beyond the vale of Siddim, 



D 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[EOOK. L 



and only noticed it on their return north- 
ward, seems to us to give a very clear sane - 
tion to our conclusion — that other neigh- 
bouring districts were also subjugated by 
the Assyrians thirteen years before, and par- 
ticipated in the revolt of the thirteenth 
year. And this conclusion is further 
strengthened by the fact that the mere inci- 
dents of this expedition would seem to have 
been far more important than what Ave must 
otherwise suppose to have been its sole or 
principal object. Corning from the north, 
the Assyrian commanders traversed the 
country east of the Jordan, overthrowing in 
their way the gigantic races by which that 
country appears to have been inhabited. 
The river Jordan at this time flowed on in a 
widened stream, beyond the vale of Siddim 
to the eastern arm of the Red Sea ; and con- . 
turning their progress southward, along the 
eastern borders of that river, the invaders 
smote the Horim who dwelt in the caverns 
and fortresses of Mount Seir. Where they 
crossed the Jordan we know not, but we 
next find them returning northward along 
its western border, reducing the tribes who 
inhabited the verge of the wilderness of 
Paran, on the south of Palestine, namely, 
the Amalekites, and such of the Amorites as 
abode on the south-western borders of the 
vale of Siddim. Arriving at last at that 
vale, the five kings by whom it was ruled 
went forth to give them battle. But they 
were defeated and fled. Now the vale of 
Siddim was of a bituminous nature, and its 
surface was in consequence much broken up 
into deep pits and fissures, into which a 
large number of the natives who had been 
in the battle were, in their flight, driven by 
the victors. Those who escaped, knowing 
that the towns offered no safety, fled to the 
neighbouring mountains. The conquerors 
then proceeded to ravage the cities of the 
plain. In this they met with no opposition, 
as all the adult population fit to bear arms 
had been defeated in the battle. They took 
all the moveable property and provisions and 
departed, carrying away with them as cap- 
tives the women, children, and other people 
whom they found in the towns. That they 
did not burn the towns and destroy the 



people, indicates that the usages of war were 
less barbarous in this age than they after- 
wards became — perhaps, because war was as 
yet a new thing, and human life continued 
to be regarded as a thing too precious — even 
to those who held it in their power — to be 
needlessly sacrificed. 

Among the prisoners was Lot, who, it 
appears, had relinquished the custom oi 
dwelling in tents, and the peculiar character 
of a nomade shepherd, and had taken the 
first step into the usages of settled life, by 
dwelling in a fixed abode, in a town, sending 
forth his shepherds to the pastures with his 
flocks and herds. The evil city of Sodom 
was that in which he had his residence ; 
and for this choice of an abode he suffered 
on more than one occasion. As a stranger, 
he had probably not been expected by the 
king of Sodom, or had declined, to go forth 
to the battle ; and his servants, who alone 
could have rendered his aid of much conse- 
quence, were probably abroad with his cattle. 
Be this as it may, Lot, with his family and 
goods, were among the spoil with which the 
conquerors departed, northward, from the 
vale of Siddim on their homeward march. 

The news of this calamity, which had 
befallen his nephew, was borne to " Abram 
the Hebrew " by one of those who had 
escaped. The patriarch was then still en- 
camped in the valley of Mature ; and he 
acted on this occasion with all the decision 
and promptitude which attend all the opera- 
tions of a nomade chief. He instantly called 
out all of his people who were able to bear 
arms*, and in whom he could most confide, 
— these were the servants who were " born 
in his own house" or camp, than which they 
knew no other home, and were attached to 
their master as to a father. The number of 
these was 318 ; and when we make a propor- 
tionable addition of slaves bought by himself f 

* Whenever this expression, "able to bear arms," is 
used in the early chapters of the history, it must always be 
understood to mean all the adult males not disqualified by 
sickness, accident, or age. Among nomade tribes, to this 
day, every male is versed in the use of arms from child- 
hood, and takes his part in the military operations of his 
tribe. This also continues to be the case, even in the first 
stages of settled life. 

t That Abram had purchased slaves appears in Gen. 
xvii. 12. 



CHAP. II.] 



ABRAHAM. 



35 



to him by the king of Egyp M\wo^ L 
naturally -weaker attachment to him the | 
patriarch did not on this occasion make any 
claim — we obtain a much dearer idea of his j 
wealth and the extent of his establishment 
than without this incidental statement we 
should have been able to realize. 

Three Anioritish chiefs, brothers, by name 
Mamre (from whom the valley took its 
name), Eshcol, and Aner, who were friends 
and allies of Abram, joined him with their 
clans ; and we need not suppose that they 
did this entirely out of regard to the patriarch, 
as is usually stated, seeing that they also 
had an interest in the matter, for the tribe 
to which they belonged had, as we have 
seen, been smitten by the Assyrians. 

The four nomade- chiefs, having united 
their forces, hastened in pursuit of the four 
conquering kings, and overtook them about 
the place which was in the after-times called 
Dan, near the sources of the Jordan. The 
assault was exactly in such style as still 
prevails among the Bedouin tribes, which 
avoid, whenever possible, a clear open fight 
with a superior or even an equal force, but 
rather seek their object by sudden surprises 
and unexpected attacks ; opportunities for 
which are easily found by the neglect, even 
to infatuation, of employing sentinels and 
scouts. So Abram, overtaking by night the 
force which he pursued — or rather, probably, 
delaying till the night season his advance 
upon them — divided his people so that they 
might rush in at once upon them from 
different quarters, and by overturning the 
tents and creating all possible confusion, 
suggest to the enemy, thus roused from 
their rest, exaggerated ideas of such numerous 
assailants as it must be hopeless to resist. 
The slaughter, as such affairs are managed 
by nomades, is not generally great, and was 
probably the less on the present occasion, 
from the fear which the pursuers must have 
been in, of injuring, in the darkness of the 
night, those whom they came to deliver. 
Struck with a panic, the Assyrians fled, 
leaving behind them all their spoil ; and, 



the course of his life, and those presented j miles, as far as a place called Hobah, to the 

north of Damascus. 

AEany writers have pointed out this trans- 
action as one of the most improbable in the 
Hebrew history ; but it is one which a 
person acquainted with the usages or even 
the history of the east receives without the 
least hesitation. The ease with which a 
very large body of men may be thrown into 
a panic by the night attack of a very small 
one is familiar in all military history. But 
the present case needs not such illustration. 
It rather appears that we form too exalted a 
notion of the force of the invaders, arising, 
perhaps, from the ideas of power and magni- 
ficence which we connect with the title of 
"king." But what the kings of this age 
usually were, and what the general extent 
of their power, we have already seen ; and 
even in our own day, too much stress would 
not, in another case, be laid upon a title 
which is given equally to the lord of a few 
hamlets in Africa and to the sovereigns of 
England or France. Whether the four kings 
were themselves subject to some greater 
power for which they acted, as we conceive, 
or were independent, as some suppose, and 
only confederated for the purposes of this 
expedition, the conclusion as to their own 
condition of petty sovereigns, commanders of 
their own clans or districts, remains the 
same, and gives us no reason to suppose that 
the forces which they conducted were very 
numerous, or more than relatively formidable. 
Their strength arose from their association ; 
and then was not such as the five petty kings 
of the plain were afraid to confront, or the 
four nomade chiefs to pursue. There is 
nothing to suggest the idea of a considerable 
army, either in the circumstances of the 
time — or even of the present time in the 
same country — or in the exploits which were 
| performed, which are such as have been 
I performed by small troops during the feudal 
j ages, in Europe, or by a still smaller force of i 
j Bedouins or Toorkmans in our own day, i 
| dashing like a storm over a large tract of j 
i country thinly inhabited by people dispersed j 
i in small and distant communities, with no 



lest they should have leisure to reflect and j defence but in themselves, and allowed no 
rally, Abram chased them about eighty j time to combine in resistance. If the forces 



36 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK 



of the three Anioritish brothers bore any 
proportion to that of Abram, the whole pur- 
suing party may have consisted of 1000 
men ; and if we go so far as to suppose the 
invading kings had 1000 each, making 5000, 
the defeat of such a body by 1000 Bedouins 
in open fight is very far from being without 
example. And Abram's victory over Chedor- 
laomer was won, not in open fight, but by a 
sudden surprise in the night season. 

This distinguished action of the patriarch 
was most acceptable to the native states : 
for even those which do not appear to have 
been immediately affected by the expeditions 
of the Assyrians, could not but regard their 
progress and success with apprehension ; and 
the great respect with which Abram is ever 
after this treated by the natives, may, per- 
haps, in a considerable degree be regarded 
as the effect of his conduct on this occasion. 

The king of Sodom — who had, with his 
escaped people, come down from his mountain 
retreat, when the Assyrians withdrew from 
the plain they had desolated — now hastened 
to meet and salute the returning conqueror. 
They met in the valley of Shaveh, otherwise 
called the King's Dale, which is supposed by 
^|ost writers to be the same as the place 
afterwards known as the valley of Jehosha- 
pbat, on the eastern side of Jerusalem. The 
king of Sodom, deprived of all his substance, 
had no refreshment to offer the delivering 
force, which may well have been exhausted 
by the pursuit and return through a country 
which the enemy had already desolated. 
But what was on this occasion necessarily 
wanting on the part of king Bera, was 
abundantly supplied by the spontaneous and 
hearty liberality of a neighbouring prince, 
whose name, Melchizedek (the just king), is 
honourably indicative of the estimation in 
which his character was held, in an age 
when the names which men bore were made 
significant of the qualities for which they 
were most distinguished. He was king of a 
place called Salem, which has been generally 
conceived to be the original of the subse- 
quently renowned city of Jerusalem ; although 
some authors have preferred the authority 
of Jerome, who says that Salem was a town 
near the famous ford over the Jordan at 



I Bethshan or Scythopolis. which still, even to 
this time, preserved this name, and the 
inhabitants of which, fondly cherishing the 
tradition which placed Melchizedek among 
its kings, went so far as to point out the 
ruins of a large building as the remains of 
his palace. 

This Melchizedek, king of Salem, on the 
approach of Abram and his men, went forth 
to meet them with an ample supply of 
victuals*. He was, like Abram, a worshipper 
of the Most High ; and as, in that age, the 
chief, whether king or pastoral sheikh, dis- 
charged all such priestly offices as were then 
in use : he was also, like Abram, the priest 
of the Most High to his own people, and, as 
such, he, with great propriety, invoked the 
blessing of God upon the chief to the wants 
of whose weary people he so liberally minis- 
tered. The patriarch, much of whose con- 
duct on this occasion was manifestly influenced 
by a generous care of his own reputation, 
acknowledged the seasonable and abundant 
refreshment which the king of Salem had 
afforded, by bestowing on him a tenth part 
of the booty he had won ; thus acting, as 
was said of him on another occasion, " as a 
king to a king." 

It is to this day a law of the desert, that 
if one tribe defeats another which has 
plundered a third, the conquering tribe is 
bound to liberate the persons belonging to 
the latter, but is entitled to retain all the 
booty which has been won, without distin- 
guishing, unless it so please, to which of the 
parties it originally belonged. Conform ably 
with a similar practice, the king of Sodom 
proposed that Abram should retain all the 
property, but restore to him all the persons 
he had recaptured. To this proposal the 
patriarch replied, — " I have lifted up my 
handf unto Jehovah, the most high God, 
the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will 
not take from a thread even to a sandal- 
thong, and that I will not take anything 
that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have 

* "Bread and wine" in the sacred narrative; but it is 
well known that, in the Hebrew idiom, bread a ;d wine, 
being at the head of meats and drinks, stand for all kinds 
of victuals. Hence Josephus describes this as a kingly 
entertainment. 

t That is, " I have sworn." 



CHAP. It] 



ABRAHAM. 



37 



■made Abram rich." He mentioned such of 
the retaken victuals as his young men had 
already eaten as the only exception ; and, 
with yery proper delicacy, left his three 
Amoritish friends, Aner, Eshcol, and Marnre, 
at liberty to retain that share of the spoil 
which custom allowed to them, and which it 
does not appear that they were incited by 
his example to decline. 

Abram returned to his encampment in the 
valley of ^Nlamre, and Lot returned to his 
abode in Sodom 

It appears very likely that the patriarch 
was troubled by some apprehensions of the 
return of the Assyrians, in greater force, to 
avenge their defeat : for to some such fears 

\ would seem to have been addressed the 
encouraging words which the Divine voice 
afterwards spoke to him : — " Fear not, Abram : 
I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great 
reward." But the heart of the patriarch 
was then faint from the thought of promises 
long postponed, and hopes long deferred, 
and he ventured to give expression + o his 
feelings, and asked, Where was his hope of 
reward, when posterity was still withheld 
from him, and he saw no other prospect than 
that he should have to adopt his house-born 
servant, Eliezer of Damascus, as his heir. 
This, while it hints the existence of a custom 
of adoption still very common in the east, is 
remarkable for its omitting to notice any 
claims which Lot might be supposed to have 
in preference to Eliezer, and, perhaps, inti- 
mates that the estrangement between the 
uncle and nephew was greater than appears ; 
or that some usage or custom, which we 

j cannot detect, operated to oppose the succes- 

| sion of Lot when the separation of his clan 
from that of Abram had taken place. 

The Lord only rebuked this distrust by 

! new promises. He assured him that no 
adopted son, no blood relation, should be his 
heir, but his own very child : and again he 
was drawn forth and bade to look on the 
stars of heaven, and count them if he was 

i able ; for his seed should be as numerous as 
they. On this, Abram's wavering faith in 
the Divine promise was strengthened ; and 
he again believed. The Lord then proceeded 
to remind him that he had been brought 



from a far country to inherit the land in 
which he dwelt ; and was assured that he 
should inherit it indeed. His faith again 
started at this, and he asked, " Whereby 
shall I kxow that I shall inherit it?" 

In those days, when men would make a 
most solemn covenant with each other, they 
proceeded thus : — they took one of every 
kind of beast or bird used in sacrifice — being 
a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtle-dove, 
and a young pigeon. The beasts they 
divided, and laid the pieces opposite each 
other, at such a distance that a man could 
pass between them ; but the birds, being 
small and of the same kind, were not divided, 
but placed entire opposite each other. Then 
the party making the agreement or covenant 
passed between the pieces, declaring the 
terms by which he bound himself to abide. 
As this was the strongest and most solemn 
method Abram knew of contracting a binding 
obligation, God thought proper to make use 
of it on this occasion. The patriarch was 
directed to make the customary arrange- 
ments ; and having made them, he remained 
till evening watching the carcases, to protect 
them from injuries by beasts or birds. "And, 
when the sun was going down, a deep sleep 
fell upon Abram ; and lo ! an horror of great 
darkness fell upon him." Then it was that 
God made a larger and more distinct declara- 
tion of his intentions than the patriarch had 
hitherto received. He was informed that 
his early descendants should be afflicted four 
hundred years in a strange land, after which 
they should be brought forth from that land 
with great riches, to take possession of the 
promised country, the utmost limits of 
which, even to the Euphrates, were now 
defined, and the existing nations specified 
whose domains they should possess. Many 
reasons might seem obvious for the delay of 
which Abram is now first warned ; but the 
only one assigned on this occasion is, that 
the iniquity of the nations to be dispossessed 
was " not yet full ; " by which we are disposed 
j to understand that they had not yet cast 
! God utterly from their knowledge, into 
whatever errors of practice and opinion they 
j had fallen. To Abram himself it was pro- 
mised that he should be gathered to his 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I 



fathers in peace, and buried in a good old 
age. The sun was now set, and it was dark, 
when the patriarch saw a cloud of smoke, 
like that of a furnace, accompanied by a 
flame of fire, pass between the severed parts 
to ratify the covenant ; and by that fire the 
victims were probably consumed. 

Sarai, the wife of Abram, desired a son no 
less fervently than her husband. But she 
had been considered barren before she left 
Mesopotamia ; she was now seventy-five 
years of age ; and she had waited ten years 
since their hearts were first gladdened by 
the promise of an heir. She therefore 
thought the case was hopeless as regarded 
herself ; and began to reflect that, although 
a son had been promised to Abrain, it had 
not been said, and did not necessarily follow, 
that this son should be the fruit of her own 
womb. Explaining these views to the 
patriarch, she prevailed upon him to resort 
to a custom of the time, of which there are 
still some traces in the east, under which 
the man takes a secondary wife, whose 
children become his undoubted heirs, equally 
with any other children he may have ; and 
if the woman is the slave or attendant of the 
chief wife, or is provided by the chief wife, 
the children are, in a legal point of view, 
considered hers : and, in the same point of 
view, the condition of the actual mother 
remains unchanged, though in practice it 
necessarily sustains some modification from 
the operation of the feelings arising from 
the connexions which are formed, especially 
when her children are grown up. The female 
whom Sarai proposed to Abram as her sub- 
stitute was her own handmaid, a woman of 
Egypt, named Hagar, who may be supposed 
to have been one of the female slaves whom 
the king of Egypt gave to the patriarch. 

In due time it was known that Hagar had 
conceived ; and the prospect of becoming the 
mother of Abram's long-promised heir had a 
mischievous effect upon her mind, leading 
her to treat her mistress with disrespect. 
Sarai, -through whose preference and manage- 
ment all this had been brought about, was 
stung to the quick by this treatment, and 
complained of it to Abram with some sharp- 
ness, insinuating that, without some encou- 



ragement from him, Hagar durst not be s< 
impertinent to her. The patriarch himseli 
respecting the rights of his wife, and dis 
pleased at Hagar's presumption (which thos< 
who know anything of oriental women o 
her class, will believe to have been ver< 
coarsely and offensively manifested), remindec 
Sarai that the Egyptian was still her bond 
servant, and that her authority was sufheien 
to prevent or punish the treatment of whici 
she complained. Being thus assured tha 
he would not interfere, Sarai proceeded to i 
more unsparing exercise of the powers witl 
which she was invested, than the raisec 
spirits of the Egyptian bondmaid coulc 
brook ; and she therefore fled, directing he: 
course towards her own country. It is i 
terrible and perilous thing for a woman 
alone and on foot, to pass the desert whicl 
lies between the land of Canaan and Egypt 
and we know not how one might do it an( 
live. Nor did Hagar accomplish this enter 
prise ; for she was as yet but upon th< 
border of the desert, and was tarrying fo: 
refreshment and rest by a well of water 
when an angel of God appeared to her, an( 
persuaded her to return and submit hersel 
to her mistress ; encouraging her to obedienc< 
by the assurance that the child she thei 
bore in her womb would prove a son, when 
she was directed to name Ishmael [Goc 
attendeth], because the Lord had attendee 
to her affliction. She was also assured thai 
this son should be the parent of a numerou: 
race ; and that while in his character, a: 
typifying that also of his descendants, h< 
should be wild and fierce as the desert ass— 
his hand against every man, and every man"; 
hand against him — he should never hi 
expelled or rooted out from the domain 
which God would give to him' ;f . Thus 
instructed and encouraged, Hagar returned 
to her master's camp in the valley oi 
Mamre ; and in due season brought forth a 
son, to whom, in obedience to the angel's 
direction, Abram crave the name of Ishmael. 



* This is the best interpretation we can give to the ex- 
pression. " and he shall dwell in the face of all his 
brethren." 



ABRAHAM AND ISAAC. 



CHAPTER III. 
ABKAHA1I AND ISAAC. 



After the birth of Ishmael thirteen years 
passed away, during which it would seem 
that both Abram and Sarai were satisfied to 
rest in the conclusion, that the son of 
Hagar was the long-promised and divinely- 
appointed heir of the patriarch. They had 
the less doubt of this, seeing that Abram 
was now on the verge of 100 years old, and 
the age of Sarai was only ten years less. It 
was at this time that Abram was again 
favoured with a manifestation of the Lord's 
presence; and no sooner did he hear the 
Divine voice, then he fell upon his face, and 
remained in that most reverent of postures 
while it continued to speak to him. He was 
reminded that there was a covenant of God 
with him, that he should be the father of 
many nations. And, as a sign of this, he 
was directed — according to a custom which 
has to this day remained common in the 
East, of changing the name to render it sig- 
nificantly applicable to new developments 
and circumstances — to call himself no longer 
Abram (high father), but Abraham (father of 
a multitude). On this occasion the Lord's 
communications to the patriarch were un- 
usually full and explicit, and cleared up 
much which remained previously uncertain 
— thus corroborating an observation already 
made, that at every fresh appearance to him, 
he received, not only confirmations of what 
had been already promised or foretold, but 
an addition to his previous knowledge. So 
now, while the promises as to the future 
Hebrew race are confirmed, Abraham now 
first learns that he is to be the father of 
other races — many races ; for, lest he should 
suppose that the plurality applied to the 
subdivisions in the race of the heir of the 
promise, he is told, " I will make thee ex- 
ceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of 
thee, and kings shall come out of thee." He 
is further assured of the permanency — the 
continuing effect to his posterity — of the 
covenant made with him. — that He, Je- 



hovah, would not only be his God, but the 
God of the chosen race to spring from him, 
and that the land in which he was a 
stranger should be their permanent pos- 
session. To be as an enduring and ineradi- 
cable token of this covenant, sealed in their 
flesh, the rite of circumcision was instituted, 
and directed to be exercised, not only upon 
Abraham himself and his son Ishmael, but 
upon all the males of his household, whether 
they had been born in that household or 
obtaiued by purchase or gift from strangers. 
And this was to be, in all future generations 
of Abraham's descendants, the perpetual 
sign of a perpetual covenant, insomuch that 
he who did not receive the sign in his flesh, 
should be regarded as an alien to the cove- 
nant, and disentitled to any share in its 
benefits. In all future time the rite was to 
be administered on the eighth day from the 
birth of the child, probably because (as in 
the case of animals destined for sacrifice 
under the law) a child was not considered 
perfect, or cleansed from the impurities 
of its birth, until seven days had passed 
over it. 

After the directions which were given in 
the matter of circumcision, it pleased God to 
furnish the first distinct intimation that 
Sarai was to be the mother of the heir of 
the promises. In the first place, and intro- 
duced by the words, "As for Sarai thy wife" 
— he is directed to call her no longer Sarai 
[or my 'princess, appropriatively], but Sarah 
[or princess, indefinitely and at large] ; the 
reason for which change is given or implied 
in the immediately following promise: — 
" And I will bless her, and give thee a son 
also of her : yea, I will bless her,, and she 
shall be a mother of nations ; kings of people 
shall be of her." The ideas thus presented 
to the mind of Abraham were so new and 
strange to him, after he had been so long- 
resting in the conclusion that Ishmael was 
the promised heir, and had so thoroughly 



40 



THE BIBLE HISTOliY. 



[BOCK I. 



dismissed all expectation of issue by Sarah, 
that he laid his face still closer to the 
ground, and laughed "within himself, as he 
thought of the confirmed barrenness of his 
wife, and the old age of both ; yet less, pro- 
bably, as being incredulous or doubtful, than 
as being struck by the singularity of such 
circumstances. 

But then, as our affections are engaged by 
that which we know, and the heart takes no 
cognizance of ties which do not yet exist, 
the mind of Abraham turned to his living- 
son Ishmael, whom he knew and loved, and 
whose claims to the inheritance of the pro- 
mise he seems at the time to have considered 
quite sufficient ; or, rather, his anxious de- 
sire for posterity had found a rest in Ish- 
mael, and that rest he was, perhaps, not 
quite willing to have disturbed by the 
question of inheritance being again laid open. 
He, therefore, ventured gently to intimate 
his willingness — even his desire — that Ish- 
mael should be regarded as the heir of the 
promise, by whispering, " that Ishmael 
might live before thee !" But God, in 
answer to this, renewed the declaration of 
his purpose, that the promised heir must be 
born of Sarah, and assured him that she 
should bear him a son indeed ; and then, at 
once to commemorate and gently rebuke the 
secret laughter of heart with which he had 
first received this intimation, it was directed 
that the name of Isaac [laughter] should be 
given to this son, whose birth within a year 
was distinctly promised. But although the 
Lord had clearly intimated that this unborn 
son was he with whom the Divine covenant 
would be established, the patriarch's regard 
for Ishmael was respected, and his anxiety 
for his welfare satisfied, by the assurance 
that he should be blessed abundantly in the 
usual objects of a Bedouin chief's ambition 
and desire,— he should be multiplied ex- 
i ceedingly, the honoured founder of twelve 
! tribes who should, collectively, form a great 
nation. 

We have dwelt particularly on this most 
remarkable act of intercourse, principally on 
account of its historical importance ; for the 
Divine intentions — which are so largely 
developed on this occasion — are not to be 



treated as incidents, but as the great ani 
mating and guiding principle in the early 
Hebrew history ; but also on account of the 
very beautiful manifestation which it offers 
of that condescension to human feeling, that 
gentleness and that tender consideration, 
which the Hebrew Scriptures ascribe to the 
Lord of the Universe. 

During the heat of the day the interior of 
the tent is usually close and oppressive ; and 
the Bedouin likes then to sit near the 
entrance, on the shady side — that, while 
protected from the sun, he may enjoy the 
comparative freshness of the open air. 
Abraham was sitting thus, about three 
months after this transaction, when he saw 
three strangers approaching, who bore the 
appearance of wayfaring men. Exactly as 
a Bedouin would do at the present day, the 
patriarch no sooner saw them than he 
hastened to press his hospitality upon them. 
For the reason we have just stated, he did 
not ask them into his tent, but invited them 
to sit under the shade of his terebinth-tree, 
-until victuals should be got ready for them, 
and water brought to refresh their feet and 
cleanse them from the dust of travel. To 
be allowed thus to entertain strangers is the 
first personal ambition of the less-corrupted 
Bedouins ; and so sincerely do they feel that 
they are the favoured parties, and so deep 
the shame to them of having their hos- 
pitality rejected, that we are not — as our 
differing customs might suggest — to suppose 
that the patriarch on this occasion pro- 
ceeded in a manner unusual to him ; al- 
though there was that in the dignified 
appearance of one of the three strangers, 
which, while it led Abraham to single him 
out as the proper person to be addressed, 
may have induced him to accost him as 
M my lord," and to u bow himself towards 
the ground" more reverently than was his 
wont. This dignified stranger graciously 
accepted the invitation of the patriarch, and 
desired him to do as he had said. 

The manner in which Abraham proceeded 
to provide an entertainment for the strangers, 
and the expedition with which this appears 
to have been accomplished, afford us much 
instruction, and serves to show very clearly 



CHAP. III.] 



ABRAHAM AND ISAAC. 



41 



that the main usages of nomade life are un- 
changed to this day. The preparation of 
bread, even to the grinding of the corn, is 
the exclusive work of women; and as the 
bread is made merely as the temporary 
occasion requires, and none is kept in hand 
from one day to another, a baking of bread 
always attends the arrival of a stranger. 
Abraham, therefore, hastened into the tent 
to Sarah, and desired her to make ready 
quickly three measures of fine flour, and to 
knead it and bake cakes upon the hearth. 
He then hastened to the herd, and took 
from thence a calf, " tender and good," 
which he gave to one of his young men to 
slay and dress ; and this indicates the an- 
tiquity of another Bedouin custom, of slaying 
an animal for the entertainment of a stranger 
arrived in the camp ; and also shows that 
even then the Orientals had no objection to 
meat which had been cooked before the vital 
warmth had departed from it. Abraham 
had only promised to bring " a morsel of 
bread to comfort their hearts;" but now, 
with the bread, he brought the calf, with 
some of those preparations of butter and 
milk, for which pastoral tribes have in all 
ages been renowned. Having brought the 
meat, he sat not down with them to partake 
of it; but, according to a still subsisting 
method of showing respect, he stood by his 
visitants under the terebinth-tree while they 
ate. 

Sarah remained in the tent. The women 
do not generally make their appearance on 
such occasions ; and it is considered in the 
last degree impertinent for a stranger to 
take notice of their existence, or to make any 
inquiries about them. Abraham must there- 
fore have been not a little startled when the 
seeming principal of the strangers abruptly 
asked him, " Where is Sarah thy wife 1 " 
and that the stranger should know her by a 
name so recently imposed, may well have 
increased his surprise. He answered, shortly, 
"Behold, in the tent." On which the 
stranger, by declaring that Sarah should in 
nine months become the mother of a son, 
revealed his high character to the patriarch ; 
and, accordingly, he is, in the remainder of 
the account, distinguished by the ineffable 



name of Jehovah. As they were sitting 
just outside the tent, Sarah hersolf, who was 
within it, heard what passed, and she 
laughed incredulously to herself, knowing 
well that not only had she ever been barren, 
but that she was past the time of life at 
which all the women of her day ceased to 
bear children. On this the Lord asked why 
she had laughed, and why she was incre- 
dulous ; for was there anything too hard for 
the Lord? and he ended in repeating the 
terms of the assurance he had just given. 
Sarah, being afraid, and knowing that no 
one could have heard her laughter, ven- 
tured to deny that she had laughed; but 
was stopped by the rebuke, " Nay, but thou 
didst laugh." 

Soon after, the strangers arose, and de- 
parted, directing their course towards the 
vale of Siddim ; and Abraham went with 
them a part of the way. As they proceeded, 
the Lord condescended to make known to 
him the object of the present motion to- 
wards Sodom ; which, speaking after the 
manner of men, as one who needed to ex- 
amine and inquire before proceeding to 
judgment, he does in these words ; — " Be- 
cause the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is 
great, and because their sin is very grievous ; 
I will go down now, and see whether they 
have done altogether according to the cry of 
it, which is come unto me; and if not, I 
will know." The other two then went on 
in advance towards Sodom, while Abraham 
remained alone with the Lord. The patri- 
arch knew what interpretation to put upon 
the last ominous words; and the character 
of the inhabitants of the plain was too well 
known to him to permit him to cherish a 
hope for. them, as matters now stood. He 
therefore, having himself had large experi- 
ence of the Lord's tender mercies, ventured, 
although feeling that he was but " dust and 
ashes." to draw near and speak to him on 
their behalf. It was not possible, he knew, 
but that the Judge of all the earth should 
do right ; and, therefore, far must it be from 
him to slay the innocent with the wicked. 

I But, yet more, the patriarch urgently de- 
sired that, for the sake of only a few just 

j men in Sodom, the whole city might be 



42 



spared. He named fifty; but after this 
request had been granted, his recollection of 
the intense corruptions of Sodom made him 
anxious to reduce the number to the lowest 
possible limit ; and therefore, by successive 
petitions, all readily yielded to him, he gra- 
dually brought down the number to ten, for 
the sake of which small number of righteous 
men the Lord declared that even Sodom 
should not be destroyed. 

The Lord then departed on his way, but 
not — at least not in bodily form — to Sodom ; 
and Abraham returned to his tent in 
Mamre. 

It was even-tide when the two angels 
came to the town of Sodom. Lot was then 
sitting at the gate, and, influenced by those 
old Bedouin habits of hospitality in which- 
he had been brought up, he advanced to 
meet them, and after proper testimonials of 
respect, such as Abraham before had shown, 
he invited them to become his guests for the 
night, after which they might rise early in 
the morning and pursue their way. There 
were in those days no such caravanserais, or 
lodging-houses, as now afford house-room to 
friendless travellers in the towns of the 
East; and, therefore, in at first declining 
the kiud offer of Lot, they expressed an 
intention of spending the night in the 
street. But he pressed them greatly, so 
that they at last yielded, and went with him 
to his house, where " he made them a feast, 
and did bake unleavened bread, and they 
did eat." After they had supped, and before 
they lay down, the house of Lot was sur- 
rounded by a great mob, composed of " both 
old and young, all the people from every 
quarter," which large expressions are no 
doubt designedly employed, to acquaint us 
with such universal depravity in Sodom as 
rendered her unable to furnish the ten 
righteous men on whom her salvation de- 
pended. The object whicii thus assembled 
them together — the abominable outrage 
they contemplated on Lot's angelic guests 
— exhibits a degree and shape of moral 
guilt of which we could have had no pre- 
vious idea when told, in general terms only, 
that "the men of Sodom were wicked and 
sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Lot, 



[book i, 

Avhose Bedouin notions of hospitality re- 
quired him to incur any sacrifice, and risk 
any danger, rather than that any evil should 
befall those who had come under the shadow 
of his roof, went out to the mob, shutting 
the door after him ; and, af.er expostulating 
with them on the enormity of the conduct 
they contemplated, endeavoured to pacify 
them by the offer of a revolting alternative, 
which, while it shows the sense he enter- 
tained of the supreme obligation of his 
hospitable duties, emphatically illustrates 
the difficulty in which he was placed, and 
his sense of the character of the people with 
whom he had to deal. Nothing can, more 
strikingly than this last act of their history, 
evince that the measure of their iniquity 
was indeed full to overflowing. So far from 
listening to Lot, they were enraged at his 
interference, and, after reviling him as an 
intermeddling stranger, attempted to lay 
hold of him, with the threat to deal worse 
with him than with his guests. It was now 
high time for the angels, whom Lot was 
entertaining unawares, to interfere by the 
exercise of the powers with which they were 
invested. As the mob pressed on, not only 
to seize Lot, but to break the door open, the 
angels opened it themselves, and pulling Lot 
into the house, shut it again. They then 
smote the brutal mob with distorted vision, 
whereby objects were presented so falsely or 
confusedly to their sight that they fancied 
they saw the door where it was not, and did 
not see it where it was : thus were baffled all 
their attempts to find the door, in which, 
unknowing what had befallen them, they 
madly persevered until they were wearied 
out. The angels then told Lot, that if he 
had any natural or acquired relatives in the 
town whose lives he wished to preserve, he 
must hasten to remove them with him from 
the place ; " For," said they, making known 
their character and their avenging mission, 
" we will destroy this place, because the cry 
of them is waxen great before the face of 
Jehovah; and Jehovah hath sent us to 
destroy it." On this Lot went into the town j 
to the men, to the husbands of his married j 
daughters, to exhort them to flee w r ith him 
from the doomed city. But they received ! 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. III.] 



ABRAHAM AN1> ISAAC. 



his communication and warning as an idle 
jest. 

When the morning dawned, the angels 
hastened Lot to depart with his wife and two 
unmarried daughters, that they might not 
be consumed in the ruin which hovered over 
the guilty city. Lot appears to have been 
attached to a place in which he had lived so 
many years ; probably he had much property 
to leave in it ; and, above all, his married 
daughters were left there with their infatuated 
husbands. All these things made him linger 
as one reluctant to depart ; and, perceiving 
this, the angels laid a gentle restraint upon 
them, taking them by their hands, and lead- 
ing them forth beyond the city. One of 
them then charged the party to hasten for 
their lives, and not to make any stay in the 
plain, or even to look behind them, till 
they reached the mountains on the borders 
of the vale; from which it appeared that 
the Divine judgment was not to be confined 
to the town of Sodom, but that the other 
cities of the plain were to be involved in its 
doom. Lot looked forward, and seeing that 
the mountains to which he was directed to 
escape lay at a considerable distance, ven- 
tured to entreat to be excused from so far a 
flight on so urgent an occasion, and that the 
near town of Bela might be allowed him for 
! a refuge. This request involved a desire 
that this town should be preserved, in ex- 
i cuse for which liberty, he pleaded the suvrfl- 
\ ness of the place ; whence, his request being 
| granted, it was afterwards known by the 
name of Zoar [small]. This town being 
I spared for his sake, he was directed to 
hasten thither; for that the impatience of 
the Divine indignation could not be ap- 
peased till he arrived there safely. So they 
! hastened down the valley ; and the sun had 
not yet risen when they entered Zoar. Then 
the destruction, sudden and overwhelming, 
came ; and not only did it overthrow and 
devour the cities of the plain, and all the 
inhabitants, and the growth of the ground. 
; and every living thing, but it cut off the 
Jordan in its course, and absorbed the very 
plain itself: the surface of which, once 
blooming like another Eden, no man has 
beheld since that day ; but, instead thereof. 



a bitter, sulphureous, and foetid lake, the 
Lake of Death, which has from that hour to 
this remained one of the wonders of the 
earth. 

The examination of the agencies which it 
pleased God to employ in effecting this great 
overthrow, and the description of the exist- 
ing Asphaltic Lake, are subjects which need 
not interrupt the present narrative. It suf- 
fices to mention, that when Abraham, who 
was probably roused by the shock and noise 
of this terrible convulsion, got up early that 
same morning, and hastened to the place 
where he had interceded with Jehovah, " he 
looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and 
toward all the land of the plain, and be- 
held, and lo, the smoke of the country went 
up as the smoke of a furnace." Then he 
but too w r ell knew that he had judged all 
too favourably of Sodom, when he had 
reckoned that at least ten righteous men 
might be inclosed within its walls. Although 
he had not expressly named Lot in his inter- 
cession, he doubtless now felt very anxious 
for him, as it could not yet be known to him 
that in this great destruction the Lord had 
remembered Abraham, and had delivered his 
nephew from the overthrow of the city in 
which he dwelt. 

And yet all the party which left Sodom 
were not saved. The destruction, as we 
have said, commenced the instant that Lot 
entered Zoar ; and his wife, who, too cu- 
riously or incredulously, lingered behind, 
regardless of the strict injunctions which 
had been given, suffered the dreadful con- 
sequences, by being involved in that destruc- 
tion which extended to the very border of 
the city which had been given to Lot for his 
refuge. She was overwhelmed and smothered 
in the spray of the igneous and saline mat- 
ters which rilled the air ; and which, gather- 
ing and hardening around her, left her 
incrusted body with some resemblance to a 
mass of rock-salt. Lot tarried not long in 
Zoar ; but removed to the mountains to 
which he had at first been directed to escape. 
We are told that he was afraid to dw r ell 
there ; but whether on account of the danger 
and annoyance from the unwholesome va- 
pours and mephitic effluvia proceeding from 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



the combustion of the plain, or from the ap- 
prehension that the town would be swallowed 
up by the increase of the waters which were 
collecting in the basin of this inclosed plain, 
are alternatives left open to conjecture : 
but whatever moved him to it, the resource 
which he adopted was less out of the way, at 
that time and in that place, than it seems to 
us ; seeing that probably it had been his 
yearly custom, while living in the vale of 
Siddim, to remove during the season of heat 
to the mountains, and to abide there in one 
of the cool caves they offered, perhaps in the 
very cave to Avhich he now resorted. To live 
thus in caves during summer has ever been 
a favourite practice, wherever such caves are 
to be found, in this region ; and if Lot had 
some property remaining, his condition was 
not so much altered but that it was as na- 
tural, or more natural, that he should take 
this usual course, than that he should go and 
claim the hospitality of his kinsman Abra- 
ham, which some needlessly wonder that he 
did not do. And that he had property is 
more than likely : not, indeed, as some pre- 
posterously conceive (from finding that he 
had wine in the cave), that he and his 
daughters had escaped from Sodom laden 
with provisions, wine, and other necessaries, 
but that his flocks and herds were out with 
his servants and shepherds, beyond the 
limits of the ruined plain ; and their return 
to him afforded the means of obtaining from 
the townspeople whatever provisions or other 
goods he required. 

In his caverned retreat a new and unex- 
pected evil befel Lot. His daughters, like 
all eastern women, and especially all women 
of Bedouin parentage, looked upon the pos- 
session of children as the best and brightest 
hope of their existence ; but they saw none 
on earth whom they might expect to marry. 
They knew not that any of their father's 
family and connections existed, to become 
their husbands ; and the example of their 
sisters, who had perished in Sodom with 
their husbands, made them afraid, if willing, 
to entertain the notion of a marriage with 
Canaanitish husbands. They therefore most 
wickedly managed, on two successive nights, 
to intoxicate their father with wine, and in 



that condition, and without his clear know- 
ledge of what was done, to procure issue by 
him. A son to each daughter was the result 
of this transaction. The eldest daughter 
gave to her son the name of Moab [from a 
father], and the younger called hers Ben- 
Ammi [son of my people], ^hich latter name, 
intimating the mother's satisfaction in the 
fact that the child was a son of her own race, 
corroborates the view we have taken of the 
motives by which the women were influenced, 
and which seems to us far preferable to the 
notion that they supposed that all the in- 
habitants of the earth, except their father 
and themselves, were destroyed in the over- 
throw of Sodom. We do not see how it is 
possible that they could have entertained 
any such impression. Be this as it may, the 
sons which were born to them were the pro- 
genitors of the Moabites and Ammonites, 

nations well known in a later age for their 
enmity to the house of Israel. Thus much 
of Lot, of whom the sacred history takes no 
further notice. 

Not long after the destruction of Sodom, 
Abraham removed from the valley of Mamre, 
where he had lived so many years, and pro- 
ceeded southward, towards the desert border 
of Palestine, and encamped* near a place 
called Gerar, between Kadesh and Shur. 
What occasioned his removal at this par- 
ticular juncture does not appear ; but it has 
been with sufficient plausibility conjectured, 
that he could not bear the stench which at 
that time arose from the sulphureous lake 
where the cities of the plain had been. 

This is the first time we read of any place 
called Gerar, which, it appears, lay in what 
was even then known as the land of the 
Philistines ; or that any mention is made of 
a people of that name as occupying any part 
of the country. But they now were settled 
in the country of which Gerar was then the 
capital; for although the Abimelech who 
reigned at that place is only called " king of 
Gerar " on the present occasion, his successor, 
of the same title, who reigned there in the 

* We say "encamped;" but as the text is that «« he 
sojourned in Gerar," we do not feel assured but that he ! 
might at first have lived in the town, as Lot had lived in 
. e odom. 



CHAP. III.] 



ABRAHAM 



AND ISAAC. 



45 



time of Isaac's manhood, is distinctly called 
"king of the Philistines." It thence results 
that the remarkable people of that name had 
already arrived in the country, seeking a 
settlement ; and finding the settled people, 
whom, coming themselves from the south, 
they first met with in the land of Canaan, . to 
be in possession of a fine and fertile territory, 
from which they deemed themselves strong 
enough to expel them, they made the attempt, 
and succeeded in it. 

Abraham had not long been at Gerar be- 
fore an incident occurred remarkably similar 
to that which had some years before hap- 
pened in Egypt. Uncorrected by the ex- 
perience he had then gained, and still tor- 
mented by the fears by w r hich he had then 
been influenced, the patriarch gave out, on 
his arrival at this strange place, that Sarah 
was his sister. As, according to a still sub- 
sisting custom among the Bedouin nations, 
unmarried females go unveiled, while be- 




[Woraan Veiled.] 

trothed and married women are heedful to 
screen their beauties from the eyes of 
strangers, Sarah was obliged to dispense with 
her matrimonial veil, the better to support 
the character of Abraham's sister. Hence 
she was the sooner seen by Abimelech, the 
king of Gerar, or by those who described her 
to him ; and the consequence was, that he 
sent and took her to his harem. For this 



act, he and his household were smitten by 
the Lord as Pharaoh had before been smitten ; 
and in a dream he learnt wherefore this in- 
fliction came upon him, namely, because he 
had taken away the wife of another man. 
In extenuation, Abimelech, who, as an 
oriental king, did not see any harm in taking 
away a man's sister without his or her con- 
sent, alleged his ignorance of the more inti- 
mate relation between them, and protested 
that in the integrity of his heart and the 
innoceney of his hands he had done this. 
His anxious inquiry, " Jehovah, wilt thou 
slay also a righteous nation "?" possibly in- 
timates an apprehension of some such 
avenging calamity as that by which the 
cities of the plain had been lately over- 
thrown ; while at the same time it manifests 
his knowledge of the true God by his peculiar 
name ; and of Him, the answer of the 
heavenly vision leaves it unquestionable that 
Abimelech was a worshipper. His excuse 
was admitted ; he was informed that Abra- 
ham was a prophet, at whose prayer, when 
his wife should be restored to him, the fatal 
malady by which the king's household was 
visited would be removed. The king gat up 
early in the morning, and told all this to his 
wondering servants. He then sent for Abra- 
ham, and remonstrated with him, rather 
impressively, for having concealed the true 
relationship between Sarah and himself. To 
this the patriarch could only allege his ap- 
prehension of being slain for her sake, in 
places where he supposed the fear of God 
did not exist ; taking care to add, that he 
had not untruly stated the near connection 
by birth, although he had concealed the 
nearer ties which existed between them. 
Abimelech then made the patriarch liberal 
gifts of sheep and oxen, and men-servants 
and women-servants ; and told him that he 
was at liberty to dwell in any part of the 
land which he pleased. On returning Sarah 
to her htisband, the king took occasion to 
administer a very graceful reproof, telling 
her that he had given her " brother " a thou- 
sand shekels weight of silver, with which he 
might purchase for her such a veil as it be- 
came a married woman to wear *. 

* Many different interpretations of Abimelech's speech 



46 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book L 



The joy, so long expected, and so long de- 
layed, came at last ; and at the date spe- 
cially appointed by God, being exactly one 
year from the time that Abraham enter- 
tained the angels under the terebinth tree, 
Sarah gave birth to a son. To this son the 
name of Isaac was given, with a joyous 
feeling* which suggested to Sarah a more 
pleasant application of the. name than in the 
circumstances which gave the first occasion 
for it. She nourished the infant from her 
own breast, probably not less than three 
years ; and a great feast signalized the day 
on which the heir of the promises was 
weaned. 

In consequence of the changes and modi- 
fications of feeling and expectation which 
the event quite naturally occasioned, the 
birth and growth of Isaac did not bring un- 
mixed satisfaction to the family of Abraham. 
Sarah, a woman on the verge of old age, un- 
expectedly gratified with a son, naturally 
enough threw the whole force of her affec- 
tions upon him, to the gradual neglect and 
ultimate dislike of Ishmael, to whom, as her 
actual blessing, she appears to have been 
considerably attached before her greater 
blessing in Isaac came. Of Hagar's feelings 
we know nothing positively, but from our 
previous knowledge of her, we can readily 
conclude that it was with no pleasant im- 
pressions that she saw the consequence of 
her own son, now growing up to manhood, 
much diminished, and many of his expecta- 
tions superseded by the young stranger. The 
mind of the rough youth himself appears to 
have been somewhat irritated by the com- 
parative neglect into which he had fallen ; 
and he seems to have occasionally manifested 
unkind feelings towards the child by whom 
this had been unconsciously produced. The 
patriarch himself appears to have been the 
least altered of the three. The sturdy cha- 
racter of Ishmael was not likely to be dis- 
pleasing to a pastoral chief ; and while the 

to Sarah have been given, and after a careful examination ; 
of them all we adhere to this (which has already been given I 
in the ' Pictorial Bible,' Gen. xx. 16) as the only one which j 
appears to us to receive illustration from the ideas and 
usages of the east. 

* See p. 53. Now Sarah says, " God hath made me to ! 
laugh, so that all that hear shall laugh with me." 



heart of Abraham was large enough for both 
his sons, each of whom he was willing to see 
in the several stations which Providence had 
assigned them before their birth, it is pro- 
bable that his first-born still possessed a 
higher place in his affections than the infant 
Isaac had yet worn 

An occasion soon occurred on which the 
operation of these different feelings was 
manifested. At or not long after the great 
feast which Abraham made when Isaac was 
weaned, Ishmael grievously offended Sarah, 
probably not for the first time, by some de- 
rision or ill-treatment of the young heir, to 
which Hagar appears, in some way or other, 
to have been a party. The wrath of Sarah 
was warmly excited, and she passionately 
insisted to Abraham that Hagar and her son 
should both be sent away, declaring that 
"the son of this bondwoman shall not be 
heir with my son, even with Isaac ; M which 
is probably levelled at some intention which 
Abraham was known to entertain of dividing 
his actual property between his sons, leaving 
to Isaac the heirship of those higher hopes 
which belonged to him. Such an intention 
was in itself so proper and customary, that 
in a later age it was applied to such cases 
by the law of Moses. The demand of Sarah 
was very grievous to the patriarch. But God, 
who on a former occasion interposed to pre- 
vent a separation, and obliged Hagar to 
return to the mistress from whom she had 
fled, now indicates his high approval of the 
course which the displeasure and passion of 
Sarah had suggested. This difference of 
procedure is evidently another instance of 
the operation of the divine intention of keep- 
ing the chosen race alone and apart from 
even collateral combinations. Yet He, who 
knew well the nature of those affections 
which He has implanted in man to bless and 
cheer his existence, gave not his sanction to 
this harsh requirement without words of 
kindness, followed by the renewed promise 
— " And also of the son of the bondwoman 
will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.''' 

To mark the alacrity of obedience which 
the patriarch ever manifested when his cause 
was indicated by a clear command from God. 
we are told that he " rose up early in the 



CHAP. III.] 



47 



i morning" to set forward the bondwoman 
i and her son upon their way. We are not 
told of the explanations and farewells which 
passed on this occasion ; but it is preposter- 
! ous to suppose there was anything harsh in 
l this dismissal. We doubt not that Abra- 
ham's household knew that he was in the 
habit of receiving directions from God, by 
! which his measures had been at all times 
| directed ; and that he had trained up all 
| belonging to him into the habit of feeling 
that when such a direction had been re- 
ceived, nothing further remained to be con- 
sidered. Abraham may or may not have 
told Hagar of Sarah's demand and her cause 
for it ; but, questionless, he did tell her of 
the Divine command, cf the necessity which 
it imposed upon him, and of the promise 
with which it was attended ; and Hagar's 
own submission, on a former occasion, to a 
command from the same supreme authority, 
sufficiently intimates that she could not but 
feel the obligation of obedience under which 
her master lay. Furnished with a skin of 
water and with such provisions as travellers 
take with them, she departed with her son 
from the tents of her lord, and his father, 
and wandered in the desert cf Beersheba. 
Here her supply of water was soon spent ; 
and the young Ishmael, less inured than his 
mother to privations, grew faint from thirst 
and weariness, and seemed likely to perish 
in the deserts which were his promised heri- 
tage. There was no remedy but water ; and 
water his mother saw none, and expected 
not to find there. The case was hopeless in 
her eyes. That the lad might not die in her 
sight, she laid him down under the shade of 
one of the desert shrubs, and withdrawing 
herself to some distance, she sat down upon 
the ground and wept aloud. The moans of 
the child and the cries of his mother were 
not unheard in heaven ; and the pitying 
voice of the angel of God called to her, say- 
I ing, " What aileth thee, Hagar % Fear not ; 
I for God hath heard the voice of the lad 
where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold 
him in thine hand ; for I will make him a 
great nation." The attention was thus 
guided to a distant well, to which she 
i hastened to fill her vessel, and returned to 



give the lad drink. All was well with them 
then. They soon after met with a party of 
Bedouin pastors to whom they joined them- 
selves, and remaining in the deserts, Ishmael 
soon distinguished himself by the expert use 
of the favourite weapon of that early age, 
the bow — he "became an archer," and ac- 
quired a character in conformity with that 
which the Divine predictions had assigned to 
him. In the east the mother usually takes 
all but the entire direction in the marriage 
of her son ; and, agreeably to this usage, 
as soon as Ishmael became of proper age, 
Hagar procured a wife for Ishmael out of 
the land of Egypt, to which she herself be- 
longed. We may now leave them and re- 
turn to the tents of Abraham. 

The special and marked interference of 
Providence to protect the sanctities of Abra- 
ham's tent made a profound impression on 
the king of Gerar ; and this was not weak- 
ened when he noticed the growing power 
and wealth of the patriarch, and how all 
things prospered with him : and now, after 
several years, seeing that Abraham seemed 
disposed to remain in his country, he deemed 
it prudent to enter into a formal alliance of 
amity with him. Reverting to the recent 
expulsion of the Avici from this country by 
his own people, he was probably not without 
fear that the Hebrew clan might ultimately 
become powerful enough, and if so, might 
probably not want the inclination, to expel 
them in their turn. Hence, perhaps, the 
careful terms in which this, the first treaty 
on record, was couched. Abimelech, attended 
by Phichol, the chief captain of his host, 
proceeded to Abraham's camp, and thus ad- 
dressed him : — " God is with thee in all that 
thou doest. Now, therefore, swear tvnto me 
here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely 
with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's 
son ; but according to the kindness that I 
have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, 
and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned." 
The remarkable brevity of this first of trea- 
ties, while it is precise even to redundance, 
combined with its fine comprehensive cha- 
racter, renders it really inimitable. Its re- 
liance upon the common sense and common 
honesty of men is also beautiful. It merely 



48 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book 



states the principle of an engagement — 
"thou wilt not deal falsely with me,"— and 
thus expresses a healthy and refreshing con- 
fidence that men would interpret rightly the 
particular acts in which false dealing might 
seem to be involved. Thus worthily does 
the first chapter in the history of human 
treaties open. 

Abraham readily consented to enter into 
this engagement ; but, before doing so, took 
the opportunity of seeking of Abimelech an 
explanation and clear understanding on a 
matter of infinite concernment to himself, 
and by which his rights as a pastoral chief 
were very seriously affected. To dig a weJl 
is, unless under very peculiar circumstances, 
the most arduous and important work which 
a person in such situations undertakes : and 
the benefits of such a work are so highly ap- 
preciated, that the property of it becomes 
vested in the person by whom it was dug 
and in his heirs for ever. While his clan 
are encamped near it, no parties not belong- 
ing to him can draw its waters without his 
leave. As we are getting into much mention 
of wells of water, it is desirable that this 
law on the subject should be clearly under- 
stood, as it tends to throw some light on 
subsequent transactions and disputes. 

Now Abraham had dug a well near his 
encampment; and of the use of this the 
" servants " (probably the herdsmen) of 
Abimelech had violently deprived him. As 
men seldom act without some reason, or 
show of reason, which is deemed satisfactory 
to themselves, it may seem likely that 
Abimelech's people doubted the right of 
Abraham to apply the law of the desert to 
the common lands of an appropriated terri- 
tory, and to claim the exclusive possession 
of the well he had dug in such land. If 
their view had been just, however, it could 
only have entitled them to a share of the 
water, and not have justified them in 
assuming that exclusive possession which 
they denied to the party at -hose ex- 
pense the benefit had been secured. But 
taking into account some transactions of 
rather later date, we incline to think that 
the cause of all the differences about wells 
which we read of in the history of Abraham 



and of Isaac, lay deeper than this account 
supposes, and must be sought in a country 
more similarly circumstanced than the open 
deserts to that in which the patriarch was 
at this time sojourning. The best analogy is 
offered by Persia. There all waste land- 
that is, all lands which are uncultivable 
from wanting the means of irrigation— are 
called "God's lands;" and although the 
king is regarded as the general proprietor 
of the soil, such lands are free for any uses 
to which they can be applied ; and whoever 
procures the means of irrigation, becomes 
the proprietor of the land which he thus 
renders cultivable. Now, as among the im- 
memorially ancient usages of the east, none 
are more ancient than those which relate to 
the occupation of land, it is not too much to 
suppose that a similar usage to this existed 
in the time of Abraham ; and, if so, it is 
easy to conclude that the anxiety of the 
Philistines' about the wells dug by Abraham 
arose from the apprehension that, by the 
formation of such wells, he would be under- 
stood to create a lien in the lands in which 
they lay, and would acquire an indefeasible 
right of occupation or rather of possession ; 
and it might seem to them inconvenient 
that so powerful a clan should acquire such 
a right in the soil of so small a territory as 
that which belonged to them. Hence also 
their care, when Abraham afterwards left 
their part of the country, to fill up the wells 
which he had dug ; and hence also the re- 
newed and more bitter strife with Isaac when 
he, on arriving there, proceeded to clear out 
these wells and to dig new ones himself. 
That Isaac also pursued cultivation to some 
extent in the lands for which he had thus 
secured the means of irrigation, is a remark- 
able corroboration of the view we now take • 
| as he certainly might in this way, but we 
know not how he could otherwise, acquire 
such a proprietary right as could alone en- 
title him to cultivate the soil. 

Abimelech, in reply to the complaint of 
Abraham respecting the well, declared that 
the conduct of his servants had not been 
sanctioned by him, and that, indeed, this was 
the first time he had heard anything of the \ 
matter ; and he made no objection to the 



j 



CHAP, in.] 



ABRAHAM 



AND ISAAC. 



41) 



proposal of Abraham, that the recognition of 
his (the patriarch's) right to the well should 
form a part of the proposed covenant. This 
proposal, thus represented as the sole matter 
for which Abraham himself took care to 
provide in a solemn engagement with the 
king of the Philistines, is, perhaps, as 
striking an indication of the supreme im- 
portance of water in those eastern countries 
as can anywhere be found. Both parties 
then swore to the covenant, the terms of 
which have thus been stated ; and as a me- 
morial of the transaction, and in particular 
of his acknowledged right to the well, the 
patriarch gave to the place the name of 
Beer-sheba — the Well of the Oath. This im- 
position of commemorative names upon 
places was the principle of various methods 
which were resorted to in these earliest ages, 
to perpetuate the memory of events and 
contracts, in - absence of those written 
documents which were afterwards found 
more suitable for such purposes. We shall 
observe this often as we proceed. 

The convenience of the situation to one 
having large possessions in cattle, together 
with the good understanding between him 
and the king, induced Abraham to remain 
many years at Beer-sheba * ; and contem- 
plating that, unless God otherwise deter- 
mine'!, he should be likely to spend the re- 
mainder of his days in that place, he planted 
a grove of trees, and built under their shade 
an altar, at which he might with his house- 
hold worship God. Such an oratory as this — 
the noblest and most beautiful of any — gives 
the first recorded instance of a place set 
apart for religious service. This, and most 
of the other patriarchal practices and ideas 
concerning trees, survived to a long sub- 
sequent age among the Druids of our own 
country ; and in their peculiar regard for 
the oak the Hebrew patriarchs went very far 
with them. Disregarding the abominations 
and corruptions which ultimately became 
connected with this and all other religious 
appropriations, let us acknowledge that when 
the fathers of the world sought for whatever 
was most noble and beautiful on earth, that 

* He was there twenty-six years, according to the Jews. 



they might connect it with their more fixed 
worship of God, and made choice of trees for 
that purpose, they decided under the full 
influence of the simpler, and — on account of 
their simplicity — the finer impulses of our 
nature. In the love of the patriarchs for 
trees, there is a feeling for something more 
than the gratefulness of their shade, — some- 
thing which, in the view of many, gives to 
their character an understandable point by 
which a respect and sympathy is secured for 
them, which even their virtues might not 
win : for we know that none but a good man 
can truly love a tree, and none but a pure 
mind can remain open to that peculiar class 
of impressions which only the presence of a 
tree can make. 

The Jewish doctors count up ten trials of 
Abraham's faith and obedience t. Nine of 
these we have told. The tenth and last was 
of all these the most terrible, and from 
which, proportionally, the character of the 
patriarch came forth with the greater splen- 
dour' — with the resplendence of gold refined 
in many fires. He had dwelt many years in 
Beer-sheba, and his son Isaac had reached 
the age of twenty-five years, when the 
astounding command came, that he was to 
immolate this son — the heir of the promises 
— as a sacrifice to Jehovah. It being the 
design of God to render the patriarch an 
eminent example to all his future posterity 
of unquestioning obedience, whereby he 
might worthily claim the title of " The 
Father of the Faithful," every circumstance 
was accumulated which seemed calculated to 
render obedience more difficult to him. Even 
in the requirement itself, the proposed victim 
is indicated by a variety of tender appella- 
tions, rising in their value by an admirable 
climax from the first to the last, every one 
of which must have entered like iron into 
the soul of the patriarch : " Take now thy 
son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest — 
and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon 

t 1. In quitting his native country, Chaldea; 2, his flight 
to Egypt from famine in Canaan; 3, the first seizure of 
Sarah, in Egypt; 4, the war for the rescue of Lot; 5, his 
taking Hagar to gratify Sarah ; 6, his circumcision; 7, the 
second seizure of Sarah in Gerar ; 8, the expulsion of 
Ishmael ; 9, the expulsion of Hagar; 10, the sacrifice of 
Isaac. Hales. 



50 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



one of the mountains which I will tell 
thee of." 

We do not imagine that the idea of a 
father sacrificing his son to God as a burnt- 
offering was new to Abraham. In after 
times we know it was but too common ; and 
it appears probable that in those times which 
lie beyond the reach of our knowledge, the 
notion had crept in, that as the life of a son, 
and especially of the eldest, the only, or of a 
very dear son, was the most valuable and 
precious offering in their power to present, it 
must needs be the most acceptable and 
meritorious in the eyes of the gods they wor- 
shipped. Hence, as the most sensible of the 
Jewish writers conjecture*, Abraham under- 
stood that this highest sacrifice, by which, as 
he knew, the heathen manifested their zeal 
for their false gods, was required of him as a 
test of his zeal for the true God. But how 
he could reconcile such a command with the 
promise of a numerous posterity through 
this very Isaac might not appear very evi- 
dent, did we not learn from the New Testa- 
ment f, that so confident did he feel that 
this promise would and must be accom- 
plished, that he believed that God would 
restore Isaac again to life after he was sacri- 
ficed. Curbing, therefore, the force of his 
paternal emotions, he, with the usual alacrity 
of his obedience, " rose up early in the 
morning," and made the necessary prepara- 
tions for the journey and for the sacrifice, 
directing the ass on which he usually rode 
to be saddled, and the wood required for a 
burnt-offering to be cleaved. He then de- 
parted with Isaac, attended by two of his 
young men. On the third day they arrived 
within a distant view of the place which 
God had appointed for this awful act ; and it 
proved to be that Mount Moriah on which, 
in after ages, the temple of Solomon was 
built; and this site was probably selected with 
a prospective reference to that circumstance, 
as well as to the mysteries of which the neigh- 
bourhood was to be the scene in ages to come. 

Here, while the place was still some way 
off, Abraham alighted from his ass, and fear- 
ing lest the young men might be disposed to 
interfere, or, perhaps, apprehending that the 

* Philo, for instance. f Heb. xi. 19. 



act which he was about to execute might, 
through such witnesses, be drawn into a 
precedent, he directed them to remain there 
with the ass, while he and Isaac went yonder 
to worship. The father and son passed on in 
silence, Isaac bearing the wood which, un- 
known to him, was destined to consume his 
own body, and Abraham taking the knife 
and a vessel containing the fire with which 
the wood was to be kindled. As they thus 
proceeded, it occurred to Isaac to ask the 
natural but, under the circumstances, very 
trying question, — " My father, .... Behold, 
the fire and the wood : but where is the 
lamb for a burnt-offering V To this Abra- 
ham only answered, " My son, God will pro- 
vide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." 
But as they proceeded, or when they arrived 
at the top of the hill, the patriarch must 
have explained to his son that he was him- 
self the victim which God had provided ; 
and that the pious and dutiful youth then 
bowed in submission to the will of God and 
the desire of his father is evinced by the 
circumstances : for any act of compulsion 
was morally impossible by an old man of 
one hundred and twenty-five years upon a 
vigorous youth of twenty-five years, whose 
strength is evinced by his ability to carry all 
the wood required for such a sacrifice ; and 
his submission must have been founded on 
the conviction that his father was right in 
that which he was doing. The altar was 
built ; the wood was disposed properly upon 
it ; Isaac laid himself down upon the wood ; 
and lest the weakness of the flesh should 
shrink in this fiery trial, he submitted to be 
bound: and then the patriarch — with feel- 
ings which a fond father can understand 
without any description, and which none 
else would understand if described — lifted 
up his hand to smite the life which was 
doubtless far more precious to him than his 
own. The trial was complete. The uplifted 
arm was arrested, and the intense feelings 
of that solemn moment were calmed in an 
instant by a most welcome voice from 
heaven, which cried : — " Abraham ! Abra- 
ham ! . . . . lay not thine hand upon the lad, 
neither do thou anything unto him : for now 
/know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou 



chap, m.] 



ABRAHAM 



AXD ISAAC. 



51 



hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from 
Me." And as the patriarch heard these 
words, his eyes fell upon a ram which had 
been caught in a thicket by its horns, and 
joyfully recognising in this the victim which 
God had provided for a burnt-offering, he 
hastened to offer it on the altar in the place 
of his son Isaac ; and never, surely, from the 
beginning of the world till now, was a 
religious act performed with such released 
feelings as those which attended this sacri- 
fice. In memory of this event, and with a 
happy allusion to his own ambiguous answer 
to the question of Isaac, as well as to its 
most unexpected accomplishment, he called 
the name of that place JAHOH JIREH * 
— the Lord will provide. 

This act of perfect obedience being con- 
summated, it pleased God to reward the 
faith he had thus proved, and not found 
wanting, by the renewal of all his former 
promises, in terms so express and so strong, 
and confirmed by the highest of all possible 
sanctions — " By Myself have I sworn," — 
that the patriarch could not but receive it 
as a firm and settled matter ; and hence it 
does not appear that any further promise 
was made to him during the remainder of 
his life. Cheered by this promise, Abraham 
returned happily to Beersheba with his son, 
whom he had, as it were, received again 
from the dead, and who must now have be- 
come all the dearer to him, for the signal 
proof he had given of his pious resignation 
and filial piety. 

After this twelve years passed away, during 

i which we only know that Abraham received 
news from Mesopotamia, informing him that 
the family of his brother, Nahor, was in a 
flourishing condition, and that he had many 

1 children, and some grand-children. During 
this time, it appears, also, that Abraham re- 

I moved his camp from Beersheba to his old 
station in the valley of Mamre, or at least 
to some place near Hebron. Here, at the 
end of the twelve years, Sarah died, at the 
age of 127 years ; and it is remarkable that 

* Dr. Hales, whose view of this transaction we have 
much followed in the preceding paragraphs, considers that 
Jahoh is, probably more nearly than Jehovah, the true 
reading of the awful name of God. 



she is the only woman whose age, at the 
time of death, is mentioned in the Scripture. 
At this time, and probably from the time of 
her becoming a mother, Sarah occupied a 
separate tent from that of her husband f. And 
now, when her death was announced to him, 
he left his own tent, and sat down at the door 
of hers, " to weep for her," this being the 
mode of proceeding which custom required. 

The death of Sarah raised a new question, 
which hitherto there had been no occasion 
to consider. It has been an ancient custom 
among the Bedouin tribes, not to bury their 
dead just where they happen to die, but to 
have a burial-place within their respective 
territories, to which they bring the bodies of 
such of the tribe as die within its district. 
In conformity with this custom, Abraham 
now wanted a suitable burial-ground, appro- 
priated to the special use of his family, and 
in which the remains of all of that family who 
died in the land of Canaan might be laid. 
He therefore applied to the Hittites, dwelling 
in Hebron, to obtain the permanent grant of 
a piece of ground proper for this purpose. 
The account of the interview is curious and 
interesting, from the light it throws upon 
the position of Abraham and the manners of 
the time. The wealthy and powerful patri- 
arch appears to have been popular with the 
Hittites, or was rather, perhaps, regarded by 
them as one whom it was their interest to 
oblige. He was received with great atten- 
tion and respect, and when his wish was un- 
derstood, the choice of all their sepulchres 
in which to bury his dead was readily and 
freely offered to him. On this the good 
patriarch rose up and bowed to the children 
of Heth, and then proceeded to explain 
more clearly the object he had in view. He 
wanted a family burial-place for a permanent 
possession ; and there was a field, called 
Machpelah, well planted with trees, and with 
a good cave at the end of it, which would 
exceedingly well answer his purpose, if the 
owner, one Ephron, then present, could be 
induced to sell this property to him. This 
person, without waiting to be pressed, readily, 
and with much tact, answered for himself : — 
" Nay, my lord, hear me : the field give I 
\ This is shown by Gen. xxiv. 67. 



2 



52 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



thee, and the cave that is therein, / give it 
thee ; in the presence of the sons of my 
people [as witnesses] give I it thee : bury thy 
dead." Now this looks very fair ; but the 
readiness of the man, the tone of the whole 
speech, with the parade of " give — give — 
give," so much reminds us of certain pas- 
sages in our own oriental experience, that 
Ephron and his speech find no favour in our 
I eyes. We are convinced that, with all this 
apparent generosity, the man had a keen 
eye to his own interests, and saw clearly that 
it might be a more profitable thing to lay 
the emir under an obligation, than to sell 
him the ground outright. Besides, if Abra- 
ham was, as seems to be the. case, a much 
more important person than Ephron himself, 
he could not have received this land as a 
present, according to the usages of the east, 
without making a more considerable present 
in return. It seems to us that Abraham 
quite understood all this. He rose, and, 
after bowing generally to the congregation, 
addressed himself particularly to Ephron, 
and insisted on paying for the field with 
money ; and this person, seeing him resolute, 
at last named the price. " The land is 
worth four hundred shekels (weight) of 
silver;" but still, in exact conformity with 
the character we have assigned him, he 
takes care to add, — " What is that betwixt 
me and thee?" As he had thus been 
brought to name a sum in the presence of 
so many witnesses, Abraham immediately 
weighed out the quantity of silver he re- 
quired ; and thus closed the bargain, with 
a degree of address, which shows that he 
was a judge of character, and knew how to 
deal with such persons as Ephron. The act 
of purchase included a specification of the 
property thus transferred, so precise and 
lawyer-like, as to make this primitive deed 
of conveyance a perfect model of its kind*; 
whilst it seems to intimate that the patriarch 
felt the necessity of precision in dealing 

* " The field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, 
which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which 
was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that 
were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto 
Abraham for a possession, in the presence of the children j 
of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city." 
Gen. xxiii. 17, 18. 



with a person of Ephron's character. Thus 
was acquired the first possession of the 
Hebrew race in the land of Canaan — that 
possession a sepulchre. 

There is not in the east any grief like the 
grief of a mother for her son, or of a son for 
his mother; and there were circumstances 
calculated to give peculiar intensity to the 
mutual attachment of Sarah and Isaac. 
The grief for the loss of his mother, acting 
upon the quiet and passive character of 
Isaac, must have been very strong; and it 
was probably the sense of privation and con- 
tinued distress which he manifested, that 
put it into the mind of Abraham, about 
three years after Sarah's death, of providing 
a wife for his son, who was then about forty 
years of age. In meditating such an object, 
a Bedouin chief would naturally first think 
of keeping up the family connection, by 
seeking for his son a wife from the house- 
hold of his brother ; and, in fact, the young 
man is held to have the first claim to the 
hand of any female which the house of his 
uncle will supply. To the influence of such 
feelings was, in the case of Abraham, added 
an anxiety to keep pure and unmixed the 
race which God had chosen. This explains 
the strong interest which Abraham and the 
other patriarchs took in providing wives for 
their sons from among their own connections. 
On the present occasion, Abraham called his 
trusty old servant, Eliezer of Damascus, and 
made him take a solemn oath to go to the 
family of his brother Nahor, in Mesopo- 
tamia, and bring thence a wife for Isaac, if 
one willing to come could be found there; 
giving him entire authority to conclude the 
marriage — which, in itself, is a remarkable 
illustration of the ideas on which oriental 
marriages are usually concluded. 

Eliezer departed with a train suitable to 
the importance of his mission, and calculated j 
to impress a proper notion of his master's 
consequence upon those to whom he was 
going — consisting of ten camels, with a 
proper proportion of attendants, and with 
valuable presents for the damsel and her 
friends; it being then, as now, the custom 
of the east to purchase the bride from her 
friends at a high price, as well as to make 



chap, nr.] 



ABRAHAM AXD ISAAC. 



53 



presents to herself, instead of the bride 
bringing a dowry to her husband. 

It would seem that Nahor's family still 
lived in the town (Charran) where Abraham 
left it. Like Lot in Sodom, they lived in a 
house — and, so far, had relinquished the 
character of the pure pastoral nomades who 
dwell in tents, although the flocks were still 
sent out to distant pastures under the care 
of the younger branches of the family, and 
of shepherds, whose mode of life was like 
that of the Bedouins. Or, which is as likely, 
if not more so, the head establishment lived 
in a house only from the latter end of 
autumn to the spring, spending the rest of 
the year in tents — a practice which still pre- 
vails among some of the pastoral tribes of 
Western Asia. 

How many days Eliezer's journey took we 
know not : but it was toAvards evening when 
he arrived in the vicinity of his place of 
destination. His intimate acquaintance 
with Bedouin habits then suggested to him 
the measures which seemed best calculated 
to ensure the object of his journey. In that 
age, as now, the duty of drawing water from 
the wells devolved upon the young women 
of every Bedouin household ; and the 
sheikh's own daughter is not above taking 
her share in a service which is not by any 
means considered degrading, — so much 
otherwise, indeed, that the young women 
find much employment in meeting at the 
well, and talking together of their small 
affairs. "When Eliezer reached the well, the 
time of the evening had nearly arrived at 
which the females are wont to come forth to 
draw water ; and he knew that among them 
he might expect to see the destined bride of 
his young master. He therefore allowed his 
camels to kneel down, in their usual posture 
of rest, resolving to remain there, as one 
who tarried for leave to give water to them 
from that well. While thus waiting, he 
prayed to the God of his master Abraham to 
give him good speed that day; and, being 
deeply impressed with the responsibility of 
the duty he had undertaken, he ventured to 
propose a sign whereby the kindness of her 
disposition should be made to indicate the 
female appointed to be the wife of Isaac. 



He was yet speaking, when the young 
women came to discharge their evening- 
duty. To one of them his attention was 
particularly drawn, by her great beauty; 
and as she was returning from the well, 
with her pitcher on her shoulder, he ran to 
meet her, with the request that she w r ou!d 
allow him to take a draught of water from 
her vessel. She said, "Drink, my lord;" 
and, with the utmost alacrity, lowered her 
pitcher from her shoulder to her hand, to 
give him drink. When he had finished, she 
hastened again and again to the wcl 1 , 
emptying her pitcher into the trough, to 
give the camels water ; while the admiring 
stranger pondered in his mind whether this, 
being the sign he had required, did not 
sufficiently indicate the future bride of his 
master's son. To assist his conclusions, he 
took from his treasures a nose-jewel and a 
pair of bracelets, both of gold, and pre- 
sented to her, asking, at the same time, 
whose daughter she was, and whether her 
father's bouse afforded room where his party 
might lodge. To his great joy, her answer 
proved her to be the very woman of whom I 
Abraham had already heard in Canaan — 
namely, Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, 
one of the sons of Nahor. She also told 
him, not only that there was room for his 
party, but also chopped straw and corn for 
the camels. The good old servant now con- j 
vinced that he had found the right person, 
bowed his head, and blessed, aloud, the God of 
Abraham, who had thus led him to the house 
of his master's brethren. No sooner had these 
words fallen from him, than Rebekah ran 
home to tell all this to her friends. 

All this time iNahor does not seem to have 
been alive — at least his name does not 
appear in any part of this transaction; and 
although Bethuel, the father of Rebekah, 
still lived, the management of all affairs 
appears to have fallen into the hands of his 
son — the keen and active Laban, — who no 
sooner caught the meaning of his sister's 
huriied statement, and saw (as the narrative 
is careful to add) the valuable presents 
which had been given to her, than he hur- 
ried forth, and warmly invited Eliezer into 
the house. There, with the usual prompti- 



54 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[» 



tude of eastern hospitality, a meal was 
ready for him and his companions by the 
time they had attended to their camels and 
washed their feet. But the faithful servant 
was too much interested in the result of his 
mission to sit down and eat before he had 
declared his errand. This he did in a pre- 
cise and simple narrative of what has 
already been related, — in which, however, 
he, with much address, was mindful to let 
his audience know of Abraham's great 
wealth, and of the prosperity with which he 
had been favoured. So Laban, in his own 
name, and that of Bethuel, delared that the 
visible traces of Divine direction in this 
matter left them without an answer; and 
then, without taking the trouble to consult 
Rebekah, added, — " Behold, Rebekah is be- 
fore thee ; take her, and go, and let her be 



thy master's son's wife, as the Lord hath 
spoken." On this the overjoyed steward 
bowed his head in thanks to God. Then he 
drew from his store of precious things, orna- 
ments of gold and silver, and costly gar- 
ments, and gave them to the elected bride ; 
and also to her brother and mother he made 
the valuable presents which they were 
entitled to expect. The next morning 
Eliezar rose early, and, rather unexpectedly, 
required permission to return to his master 
with the bride. They wished him to tarry a 
few days ; but as he persisted, and Rebekah 
professed her willingness to go at once, no 
further opposition was made. 

Women in the east consume but little 
time in preparing for even an extensive 
journey; and Rebekah, being soon ready, 
was dismissed by Laban with the very cha- 




irwomen on Camels.] 



racteristic oriental blessing, — "Be thou the 
mother of thousands of millions, and let thy 
seed possess the gate of those which hate 
them." The nurse is a very respectable and 
influential personage in an eastern house- 
hold, and often accompanies the young 
female she has nourished to the new home 
which marriage gives her, and where she 
becomes her chief adviser and confidant. So 
now, Rebekah's nurse and some of her 
damsels were sent with her. They were 



mounted on camels, and departed, Eliezer 
and his men leading the way. 

It was eventide when the party arrived 
in the neighbourhood of Abraham's camp ; 
and the contemplative Isaac had walked 
forth into the fields to meditate, and was 
the first to discover the advancing camels. 
He walked on to meet them; and his 
destined bride, observing him approach, 
asked Eliezer who he was ; and hearing the ! 
answer, — "It is my master," — she dis- ] 



III.] 



ABRAHAM AND ISAAC. 



55 



mounted from the camel, and enveloped 
herself in the veil of a bride, — by which 
Isaac might distinguish her from the others, 
and would know that the mission of his 
servant had not been unavailing. Having 
learnt from Eliezer all that had taken place, 
Isaac took Rebekah to the tent of his mother, 
Sarah, which belonged to her as the chief 
woman of the tribe. He loved her, and she 
became his wife. Then, first, he began to 
feel comfort since his mother's death. 

All the circumstances of this expedition 
are, like others in the patriarchal history, 
eminently illustrative of the condition of 
life to which they belong ; and they abound 
with such strong and finely-discriminated 
traits of character and natural feeling, that 
the writer who wishes to leave upon the 
mind of the reader distinct and charac- 
teristic impressions of the ages and the 
conditions of life through which his history 
leads, may well be reluctant to submit the 
details which lie before him to the curtail- 
ment and condensation which his limitations 
may require. 

Soon after Isaac's marriage, Abraham, re- 
membering that he was to be " the father of 
many nations," took to himself a second 
wife, Keturah, who was probably one, per- 
haps the chief, of the handmaids who had 
been " born in his house, or bought with his 
money." By her he had six sons, Zimran, 
Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah ; 
all of whom before his own death, thirty-seven 
years after, he sent with suitable allowances 
into the country east and south-east of the 
Promised Land, where they became the 
founders of Arabian tribes, some of which 
are often noticed in the Jewish annals, and 
some remaining traces of whose names may 
to this day be discovered in Arabia. Thus 
Abraham disposed of his sons by Keturah in 
his own lifetime, lest at his death they should 
be disposed to interfere with the superior 
claims of Isaac, and, probably, lest any of 
them should settle in the land of Canaan, 
which was that son's destined heritage. 

While thus Abraham was becoming the 
father of many nations, the beautiful wife 
of Isaac proved to be barren. " Of all the 
patriarchs," says Bishop Hall, " none made 



so little noise in the world as Isaac ; none 
lived either so privately or so innocently: 
neither know I whether he approved himself 
a better son or a husband; for the one, he 
gave himself over to the knife of his father, 
and mourned three years for his mother; for 
the other, he sought not to any handmaid's 
bed, but in a chaste forbearance reserved 
himself for twenty years' space and prayed. 
Rebekah was so long barren."* After this 
she conceived, and brought forth twins, 
whose fortunes were predicted before their 
birth; for their struggles, as if for supe- 
riority, in her womb, engaged her attention, 
and she entreated God to show her what this 
might mean. The answer was, that two 
nations, two manners of people, were in her 
womb; and that of these the one people 
should be stronger than the other, and the 
elder should serve the younger. When they 
came into the world, the first-born exhibited 
a very hairy appearance, on which account 
the name of Esau \_hairy] was given to himt, 
the other had hold of his brother's heel in 
the birth, and received the name of Jacob 
[heeT] from that circumstance. Characteristic 
instances, these, of the manner in which, as 
now, among the Bedouin tribes, names were 
imposed upon children with reference to any 
unusual appearance they exhibited, or any 
little incident that occurred at the time of 
their birth. 

Nothing further is recorded of Abraham 
till he died (b.c 1978), at the age of 175 
years, " an old man, and full of years." His 
body was deposited beside that of Sarah in 
the cave of Machpelah, which he had bought 
of Ephron the Hittite ; and it is very inte- 
resting to note that the wild son of Hagar 
united amicably with the placid Isaac in 
rendering the last of duties to their common 
father; and as the act of burial in the east 
very speedily follows death, this leaves us to 
infer that Ishmael had been summoned from 
the desert to receive the dying blessing of 
the patriarch. 

As this is the last occasion in which 



* 'Contemplations,' Book iii. cant. 1. 

t The name Esau is most generally applied to him per- 
sonally ; but his descendants are always invariably called 
Elomites, from his other name. 



56 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



Isbmael is personally produced by the 
sacred historian, he takes the opportunity 
of stating as much of his further history 
as the objects of his narrative required. 
It amounts to this, that the son of 
Hagar was the father of twelve sons, who 
were the founders of as many tribes, which 
took their names, and which abode in the 
northern parts of Arabia, and on the bor- 
ders of Egypt, Syria, and the Euphrates. 
That these tribes did not all take to the 
nomade life, and dwell in tents, appears 
from the mention of their " towns and 
castles." Ishmael himself died at the age 
of 137, " in the presence of all his brethren." 
The Jewish writers have claimed for him 
the distinction of being the founder of the 
Arabian nation. But there were Arabians 
before Ishmael ; and the amount of his 
claim is doubtless that which the Scripture 
allows him — that he was the father of twelve 
Arabian tribes, and forms but one of the 
chief stocks from which the Arabian nation 
is descended. 

Esau and Jacob were fifteen years of age 
when their grandfather Abraham died. As 
the lads grew up, they manifested characters 
as different as those of Ishmael and Isaac 
had been. Esau was the Ishmael of this 
generation, but Jacob was not the Isaac. 
Esau cared little for the more quiet and 
inactive duties of pastoral life, but he was 
abroad in the open country, where his care- 
less and impulsive character found a con- 
genial, because active and excitable, employ- 
ment in hunting and shooting down with 
his arrows the gazelles and other wild 
animals which that region offered. Jacob, 
on the other hand, was a plain and quiet 
man, not taking any interest in such hunting 
excursions as those of his brother, but re- 
maining for the most part at home among 
the tents, and acquiring much knowledge of 
the shepherd's unostentatious and humble 
duties. The character of Esau, rather than 
that of Jacob, is the one in which a Bedouin 
father is most likely to take pride; and 
hence it is no wonder that Isaac had much 
more regard for Esau than for his brother, 
the more, perhaps, as the former was enabled 
to show his father frequent and acceptable 



marks of his affection and respect by bring- 
ing for his eating the more choice game that 
he had killed. Isaac was also willing to 
regard his first-born as the heir of the pro- 
mises ; for although w r e see no reason to 
agree with those who think that Rebekah 
did or could conceal from him the commu- 
nication concerning them which she had 
received from God before their birth, yet 
that communication, as interpreted with the 
bias of his affection for Esau, might not 
seem to him very clearly to establish the 
Divine intention to assign to his youngest 
son the same preference which he had him- 
self obtained over Ishmael. But this in- 
tention seemed very clear to Rebekah her- 
self, who interpreted the Lord's answer to 
her by the light of her own affection for 
Jacob. He was her favourite. She proved 
a somewhat crafty and unscrupulous woman, 
and Jacob's natural disposition, till he got 
advanced in years, lay rather in the same 
direction ; and, besides this bond of sympathy 
between them, his more gentle and congenial 
character, together with his being more con- 
stantly at home, naturally recommended 
him to a higher place in his mother's af- 
fection than that which the more boisterous 
and careless Esau occupied. Jacob knew 
from his mother the superior destiny which 
awaited him; and, at her suggestion, kept 
himself on the watch for an opportunity of 
getting from Esau a formal transfer or 
relinquishment of the higher natural claims 
which he might be supposed to derive from 
the accident of a few minutes' earlier birth. 
Such an opportunity was not long wanting. 

Jacob was one day preparing a savoury 
pottage of lentiles, which, or the mode of 
preparing which, was a novelty in that part 
of the country, having been lately introduced 
from Egypt*. While he was thus occupied, 

* We obtain this conclusion from the circumstance that 
the mess was manifestly strange to Esau, and, by reason of 
that strangeness, appeared to him the greater delicacy,— 
compared with the fact on which Austin founds his con- 
clusion that they were Egyptian lentiles, namely, that 
Egypt was famous for the lentile, and the preparation of it. 
It had two sorts, one darker than the other, and both 
greatly prized by the ancients. How common and favourite 
a dish lentile pottage was, appears from the ancient paint- 
ings of that country, which represent persons engaged in 
preparing it over a fire. August, in Ps. xlvi. ; Plin. Hist. 
Nat. 1. xviii. c. 31 ; Wilkinson, vol. ii. No. 277, fig. 9. 



j CHAP. III.] ABRAHAM 

Esau came in from a severe day's hunting, 
famishing with hunger and faint from 
fatigue. Under such circumstances the 
coarsest fare would have seemed pleasing to 
him ; but the savoury smell and tempting 
reddish appearance of the pottage was abso- 
lutely enchanting. The uncivilised or semi- 
civilised man is a child in his appetites at 
j all times ; and the hunger of such a man is 
a madness. Jacob was too sharp a youth 
j not to know this, and he did not over- 
j estimate the importance of his pottage when, 
on Esau's begging passionately for a share 
of "that red — that red"* (not knowing its 
name), he demanded his birthright as the 
price of the indulgence. We incline to 
| think that he had before been teased on this 
j point, at less favourable moments, and had 
resisted ; but now he was in the state of one 
j who would deem all prospective benefits and 
| privileges cheap, in comparison with the 
present good of a cup of cold water. He 
i therefore exclaimed fretfully, — " Behold, I 
j am at the point to die : and what profit shall 
I this birthright do to me?" Seeing his 
brother so ready to take the bait, Jacob was 
| not content with a mere off-hand agreement, 
| but to make the bargain secure would not 
part with his pottage till it was confirmed 
by oath; Esau then got his mess ; and surely 
" there was never any meat, except the for- 
bidden fruit, bought so dear as this broth of 
Jacob." f 

This transaction has raised much inquiry 
concerning the nature of those privileges — 
the birthright — which Jacob coveted so 
highly, and which Esau so lightly bartered 
away. Taking the question generally, the 
privilege of the firstborn seems to have 
been that he became the acknowledged chief 
or head of the tribe or clan, and in that 
character (but some dispute this) was its 
authorised priest and sacrificer, and that he 
had a title to the first consideration in the 
last blessing of the father, and to a portion 
of the inheritance twice as large as that 
which any of the other sons received. So 
much generally ; but in the particular in- 

* Hence he got for a name the word he had used, Edom, 
(red), 
t Bishop Hall. 



AND ISAAC. 57 

stance, there were other privileges which 
were then supposed to be annexed to primo- 
geniture, but which did not ultimately 
prove to be so: these were, the promised 
Divine care and blessing on the chosen race, 
the inheritance of the land of Canaan, and 
the instrumentality of bringing a blessing 
upon all the families of the earth. Now the 
question is, whether it was the temporal or 
spiritual heritage, or both, the transfer of 
which Jacob obtained from his brother, and 
this is a question beset with considerable 
difficulties. Upon the whole we are inclined 
to free Jacob and his mother from the sus- 
picion of mercenary motives, and to consider 
that they regarded only the spiritual heritage 
— the heirship of the promises — as being in- 
tended for Jacob ; and that of this only they 
wished Esau to relinquish any claim which 
he might be supposed to derive from the 
priority of his birth. We can easily under- 
stand how such a man as Esau might 
"despise" this birthright, and ask con- 
temptuously what good it would do him; 
but even he was probably not insensible to 
the benefit of a double share in Isaac's rich 
possessions. 

About this time, or soon after, there was a 
famine in the land of Canaan ; and Isaac 
appears to have had some thought of going 
down into Egypt, as his father had done 
before. But the Lord appeared to him, and 
forbade him to go thither, or to leave the 
country which, for Abraham's sake, had 
become the destined heritage of his seed ; 
and, on this occasion, all the promises made 
to his father were renewed to him in terms 
very full and distinct. He then went to 
Gerar, where another Abimelech than he 
who made the covenant with Abraham 
reigned, and another Phichol was captain of 
the host. These were evidently not proper 
names, but the official titles which the kings 
and military commanders of the Philistines 
bore. While Isaac tarried here, an adventure 
occurred remarkably similar to that which 
his father had met with in the same place, 
in consequence of his denial that Sarah was 
his wife. Indeed, the circumstances which 
happened to Abraham in Egypt, to the same 
person in Gerar, and to Isaac also in that 



58 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I 



place, have so much resemblance, and are, 
in themselves, so unlikely to have occurred 
to the same persons, that were one authorized 
to judge the book of Genesis by the common 
rules of historical criticism, he might be 
inclined to think that the compiler of the 
book, having before him three different 
accounts of the same transaction, was led, 
from the differing circumstances which he 
found in them, to consider that the state- 
ments referred to three different transactions 
instead of one. As, however, this explanation 
is not admissible, we proceed to observe that 
although Isaac, like his father before him, 
gave out that his wife was his sister, she 
was not taken from him, nor was he molested 
on her account ; but when the king acci- 
dentally discovered that Rebekah was really 
Isaac's wife, he sent for him and charged 
him with this disguise. He made just the 
same excuse as his father ; and the king, 
after pointing out the danger which might 
have ensued, gave strict charge to his people, 
declaring that " he that toucheth this man 
or his wife shall surely be put to death," — a 
rather superfluous injunction, we should 
think, but, in fact, curiously illustrative of 
the ideas of the Orientals and their attitude 
towards foreigners. This also will be noted 
as the first instance in history of a king 
holding the power of life and death. 

Isaac remained a long time in this neigh- 
bourhood ; and, after a while, he began to 
pay some attention to agriculture, being 
probably induced thereto by some existing 
scarcity, or the apprehension of one approach- 
ing, and the virgin soil rewarded him that 
same year a hundredfold. Here, in every 
way, Isaac prospered very greatly, — or, in 
the cumulative language of Scripture, " The 
Lord blessed him : and the man waxed 
great, and went forward, and grew until he 
became very great : for he had possession of 
flocks, and possession of herds, and great 
store of servants."* This great prosperity 
excited the envy of the Philistines, and they 
were especially jealous of his operations in 
husbandry, for the reasons which we have 
lately had occasion to state f. They there- 
fore hastened to fill up with earth the wells 

* Gen. xxvi. 12—14. \ Ante, page 48. 



which had been dug by his father, and on 
which Isaac's own claim to conduct such 
operations rested ; and, to crown all, the 
king himself desired the patriarch to remove 
himself to a greater distance, as his people 
could not bear to see a stranger thriving 
better than themselves upon their own soil. 

For the sake of peace, Isaac accordingly 
departed, and naturally thought of resorting 
to the wells which Abraham had digged in 
the remoter parts of that territory. He 
found that these had already been filled up 
by the Philistines after the death of Abraham, 
and he proceeded to clear them out, and to 
restore to them the names by which his 
father had called them. He does not appear 
to have been interfered with in these opera- 
tions. But when he proceeded to dig new 
wells the case was changed. His people, 
digging in the valley of Gerar, found a fine 
spring of water, and proceeded to form a 
well ; but a warm dispute arose about it 
between his shepherds and those of Abime- 
lech, the latter declaring the water to be 
theirs : on which Isaac, ever disposed to 
peace, gave it up to them, after imposing 
upon it the opprobrious name of Ezek [con- 
tention]. Proceeding farther, he dug another 
well : but about this the same strifes arose 
with the same result ; and the patriarch left 
upon this well the name of Sitnah [hatred]. 
About the next and remoter well which his 
people digged there was no strife, and he 
gave it the name of Rehoboth [room] : " For 
now," said he, " the Lord hath made room 
for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." 
Having thus provided a well — for his cattle 
were sent to pasture in this district — he 
removed his head-quarters to Beersheba, 
where he had himself been born, and which 
was, in his later years, the favourite station 
of his father. 

On the night of his arrival at that old and 
honoured station, the Lord appeared to him 
in a dream, or vision, and conveyed to him 
the highest possible comfort and encourage- 
ment, in the words, " Fear not, for lam with 
thee;" and then renewed his promise to him 
— to bless him, a-nd to multiply his seed for 
Abraham's sake. Then Isaac built an altar 
there, and worshipped the Lord ; and his 



CHAP. III.] 



ABEAHAM AND ISAAC. 



59 



purpose being confirmed to remain for some 
time among the scenes of his boyhood, he 
proceeded to establish his camp, and to dig 
a well — or, more probably, to clear out that 
which his father had digged there. 

Abimelech reflected that Isaac had not 
been very kindly treated by himself, and 
that his conduct had encouraged the harsh- 
ness of his servants, by which the patriarch 
had been obliged to make this more distant 
removal ; and, apprehending that he might 
harbour feelings of resentment on this account, 
he determined to go to him and renew the 
covenant of peace which their fathers had 
made. So he went, accompanied by Ahuz- 
zath, his friend, and by Phichol, the com- 
mander of his forces. Isaac, to make them 
feel that he was sensible of the injuries he 
had received, gave them but a cool reception ; 
but, nevertheless, entertained them hand- 
somely, and, on the following day, consented 
to enter into the desired covenant. This 
matter was just concluded, when Isaac's men 
brought him word that they had reached the 
spring in the well which they were clearing 
out, on which he significantly bestowed upon 
it the name, the Well of the Oath [Beersheba], 
which his father had given it, on nearly a 
similar occasion, a hundred years before. 
Indeed, it is astonishing how similar, almost 
to identity, the history of Abraham's dealings 
with the Philistines is to the account of 
Isaac's intercourse with the same people. 

Being now on the borders of the Hittites, 
into whose districts Esau's huntings often 
led him, Esau soon formed such connections 
as led to his marriage with two women of 
that nation, Judith and Bashemath, by 
name. He was then forty years of age, 
which, as already remarked, seems to have 
been the established age of manhood until 
the time of Moses*. This proceeding was a 
great grief of mind to his father and mother, 
who were, as usual, very anxious that their 
sons should strengthen the family ties, and 
keep the race unmixed, by marriages in 
their own family. Their feelings in this 
matter became one of the natural instru- 
mentalities whereby God effected his purpose 
of keeping the chosen race apart and sepa- 

• Compare Exod. ii. 11, Acts vii. 23. 



rate; and, doubtless, formed one of the 
reasons, so to speak, why a Bedouin family, 
in which such feelings are always strong, 
was in the first instance selected for this 
great object. 

Esau, however, did not separate himself 
from his parents ; and he still retained the 
chief place in the affections of his father, 
who continued to regard him as the heir of 
the promises. He was probably unacquainted 
with the sale of the birthright, which was a 
transaction too little to the credit of any of 
the parties concerned to make them anxious 
to tell him of it ; or, if he did know it, he 
may have regarded it as a mere youthful 
trick — the effect of fatigue and hunger, to 
which no importance was to be attached. 
When, therefore, at the age of 137 years, 
Isaac's eyesight had failed, and other infirmi- 
ties of age had grown upon him, he imagined 
that the day of his death could not be far 
distant, and prepared to confer upon his 
first-born, in a formal blessing, that full 
inheritance of the promises made to Abraham, 
which he desired him to possess, and which 
he unadvisedly deemed himself qualified to 
bestow. As this matter involves some points 
of difficulty, a little explanation may not be 
unacceptable to the reader. 

As these were not days of written docu- 
ments, it appears to have been the custom 
for fathers, when they found their last days 
approaching, to assemble their sons, and 
bless them, or, in other words, deliver an 
oral will, in which, mixed with matter of 
retrospect or anticipation, each was told 
what he was to do and to inherit. In the 
family of Abraham, quite a new and inte- 
resting application of this custom arose, 
since the heritage comprehended objects 
over which the father had no control, and 
benefits which he did not himself possess, 
and could not, as of himself, bequeath to 
others. Therefore the patriarchs could not 
properly, on their own authority, declare the 
appropriation of the blessings promised or 
bestowed in the covenant made with Abraham; 
though, if they had so chosen, they might 
probably, on their own responsibility, have de- 
clared whatever appropriations they deemed 
fitting of the actual property — the flocks 



[~60 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I. 



and herds, the silver and the gold — which 
they then possessed. For this reason — to 
anticipate the history a little — Jacob him- 
self, in his old age, appears to have disposed 
of his actual property in the usual way ; but 
no notice is taken of it in Scripture, which 
is, however, very particular to tell us how, 
before his death, he assembled his twelve 
sons to declare to them what God had shown 
him, respecting the distribution among them 
of the heritage of promise. 

Now, to return, Abraham is not recorded 
to have performed any such act of blessing ; 
and the reason is plain, — he provided for all 
his sons in his own lifetime, and had nothing 
further to say to them concerning the 
property remaining with him, and which 
belonged to Isaac. And then, as to the 
heirship of the promises, there was nothing 
whatever for him to declare on that point, 
and the divine will had repeatedly declared 
its appropriation to Sarah's son. But, in the 
present instance, the case was different. 
Isaac had two sons ; the claim of the eldest 
of whom to the secular heirship was unques- 
tionable ; which of them might inherit the 
promises of the covenant was less certain : 
but, in the absence of any positive direction, 
Isaac might infer that in this case, and 
thenceforth, it was to follow the course of 
nature, and form a part of the brilliant 
heritage of the first-born. He appears to 
have made this inference, and to have con- 
cluded himself authorized, without any 
special direction from God, to deal with the 
whole heritage under that impression. If 
his partialities had led him to prefer Jacob, 
he would have hesitated to alter, on his own 
authority, what was considered the course of 
nature ; but in regarding his favourite Esau 
as the heir of the covenant, there seemed no 
responsibility of alteration, but only the 
confirmation of that which nature appeared 
to have appointed, and which God had not 
seemed to him to set aside. 

On whatever views Isaac proceeded, he 
certainly acted on his own authority when 
he said to Esau, — Take " thy quiver and thy 
bow, and go out to the field, and take me 
some venison ; and make me savoury meat, 
such as I love, and bring it to me, that I 



may eat ; that my soul may bless thee before 
I die." This did not escape the ears of 
Rebekah, who, finding that her husband was 
at last about to bestow on Esau what she 
herself considered the due of Isaac, imme- 
diately, with the ready ingenuity peculiar to 
her sex, thought of a device whereby this 
plan might be frustrated, and the important 
blessing diverted to the son she better loved. 
She proposed this plan to Jacob ; but even 
he was startled at its boldness, and urged 
some objections ; but as these were not 
objections of principle, and only arose from 
fear of the consequences of detection, they 
were easily removed by his mother, who was 
very willing to take all the consequences on 
herself, and he then submitted to her direc- 
tion. He went and fetched two good kids 
from the flocks, with which Rebekah hastened 
to prepare savoury meat, such as Isaac 
loved. She then produced a dress belonging 
to Esau, for Jacob to put on ; and, when he 
was clad, fastened about his hands the skins 
of the goats, to imitate the hairiness of Esau ; 
and then she gave him the savoury mess, 
with bread, to take to the blind old man. 
This was a deservedly anxious moment to 
both Jacob and his mother ; for they had 
two fears — one, lest Isaac should detect the 
imposture, and the other, lest Esau should 
return before all was over. But all took 
effect according to their wish : for although 
some probable doubt about the fitness of his 
"own course made Isaac guarded and suspi- 
cious ; and although his ear, sharpened by 
blindness, enabled him to detect the difference 
of the voice, and the quickness of the assumed 
Esau's return excited his surprise, the feel 
and fresh smell of the dress which Jacob 
wore, and the hairiness of his hands, lulled 
his doubts, and he received the savoury mess 
which the deceiver brought, and afterwards 
drank the wine which he offered. Then he 
said, " Come near now, and kiss me, my son ;" 
and when Jacob went near to kiss him, he 
said, " See, the smell of my son is as the 
smell of a field which Jehovah hath blessed : 
therefore God give thee of the dew of 
heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and 
plenty of corn and wine : let people serve 
thee, and nations bow down to thee : be lord 



j CHAP. IH.J ABRAHAM 

over thy brethren ; and let thy mother's sons 
bow down to thee : cursed be every one that 
curseth thee, and blessed be every one that 
blesseth thee." There can, we imagine, be 
no doubt that Isaac intended thus to convey 
to Esau the blessings of God's covenant with 
Abraham : but, from the want of precision in 
the terms which he employs, it may be 
questioned if he well understood what those 
blessings really were. Nor would this be 
much marvel ; for, if the truth must be told, 
Isaac appears to have been rather a weak 
and rather an obtuse person : nor had his 
mind been enlarged by much intercourse 
with God ; for Jehovah, who had appeared 
often to his father, and did hereafter appear 
many times to his own son, manifested his 
presence to him only twice. The clause, "be 
lord over thy brethren," may seem to indicate 
his knowledge of the intimation which had 
been made to Rebekah before the birth of 
her sons, — (i the elder shall serve the younger." 
— and to be designedly in counteraction of 
the impression which it had made. The 
expression, " Let thy mothers sons bow down 
to thee," has also a very invidious look, and 
seems as if levelled, with no good will, at 
Jacob, the mother's favourite. 

The design having thus succeeded, Jacob 
left his father ; aud he had scarcely departed 
when Esau returned from his hunting, and, 
with the game he had killed, prepared such 
savoury meat as his father loved, and bare 
it to him. We may imagine the consterna- 
tion of Isaac when the well-known voice of 
his beloved son exclaimed, " Let my father 
arise, and eat of his son's venison, that thy 
soul may bless me." He trembled very 
exceedingly, and said, " Who ? where is he 
who hath taken venison, and brought it me, 
and I have eaten of all before thou earnest, 
and have blessed him 1 yea, and he shall be 
blessed." The turn in this last clause is very 
remarkable, and seems to intimate that the 
patriarch received a sudden conviction, which 
he had half suspected from the first, but had 
been unwilling to entertain, that Jacob was 
the heir of the promises. Whether this 
conviction was the result of some sudden act 
of mind, or that inspiration and direction 
from above, acting upon his mind, for which 



AND ISAAC. 61 

he ought, in the first instance, to have waited 
before he undertook to assign the heirship of 
the covenant, may appear doubtful to many ; 
but the latter seems the more probable 
alternative, as it is manifest that presently 
after he spoke of what he did not previously 
know, and of what he could not possibly 
know but through the spirit of prophecy. 

The impetuous Esau was aghast at this 
intimation ; he cried, with a great and 
exceeding bitter cry, and said to his father, 
"Bless me, even me, also, my father!" 
To which Isaac could only reply by reminding 
him that his brother had come with subtilty, 
and taken the blessing intended for him. 
This called to Esau's mind his earlier wrong; 
and, adverting to the double meaniug of his 
name*, he said, " Is not he rightly named 
Jacob ? for he hath supplanted me these two 
times ;" but again he returned to the single 
point in which his hope lay, and exclaimed, 
'• Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me V 
This must have reminded Isaac, perhaps 
Avith some compunction, that in blessing, as 
he is supposed, his first-born, he had not, 
intentionally, kept in view any blessing for 
his youngest son. Now, convinced of an 
overruling control which precluded him from 
recalling the blessing he had unknowingly 
given to Jacob, he answered, " Behold, I have 
made him thy lord, and all his brethren 
have I given to him for servants ; and with 
corn and wine have I sustained him : and 
what shall I do now unto thee, my son?" 
But Esau, fairly overpowered, and incapable 
of taking in any but one broad idea, persisted 
in his right to an equivalent blessing, if not 
exactly the one intended for him, — " Hast 
thou but one blessing, my father ? bless me, 
even me also, my father ! And Esau lifted 
up his voice, and wept." The blind old man 
must have been deeply tried, not only in 
witnessing this affliction of his son, but to 
feel that his wishes and hopes for him had 
been brought to nothing. But then, or just 
before, he received such a clear impression 
or vision as to his son's future lot as enabled 
him to gratify his wish. " Behold, thy 
dwelling shall be remote from the fatness of 

* Jacob means a supplanter, as well as a heel. 



62 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I 



the earth, and from the dew of heaven * ; by 
thy sword shalt thou lire, and thou shalt 
serve thy brother : but the time will come 
when thou shalt prevail, and shalt break his 
yoke from off thy neck." We shall see the 
fulfilment of this in due season. 

All the parties were more or less to blame 
in this curious transaction. Isaac, for acting 
without due authority, and, as indicated by 
his conduct, with doubt that he was doing 
right. Even Esau cannot claim much of our 
sympathy in his too late clamour for a benefit 
which he had so childlishly and lightly 
bartered away ; and as to Jacob and his 
mother, if they had supposed the blessing 
due to Esau, their plots to deprive him of it 
would have been crimes of a deep dye ; but 
as they believed the youngest son to be by 
the appointment of God the heir of the 
promises, they had better have left Him to 
effect his own purposes in his own way and 
his own time, without seeking to promote his 
objects by such paltry and needless devices. 
Jacob's craft, his lies, and his heartless 
impositions will always bear a very bad 
look ; and his conduct leaves such an im- 
pression upon our minds, that it takes a long 
while before we get reconciled to him ; and 
it is not till after he has passed the river 
Jordan, on his return from Mesopotamia, 
that he obtains our respect. These clever 
operations proceeded on the principle of 
doing wrong to prevent wrong, or to obtain 
good. 

Isaac was too much humbled by the con- 
sciousness of his own share in the wrong- 
doing, and by the certainty he now possessed 
that Jacob was the real heir of the blessing 
he had obtained, to harbour any resentment, 
or to make any complaints ; on the contrary, 
while Esau was still the beloved of his heart, 
he began henceforth to take unusual interest 
about one whom he now recognised as the 
peculiar object of the divine favour. But as 
for Esau, his resentment was fierce and deep, 

* This is the reverse of our current version ; and while 
the text allows this interpretation, it is best to adopt it, as 
otherwise the same blessing is thus far given to Esau as to 
Jacob, while, in fact, it was not true that the posterity of 
Edom possessed a territory that can well be considered 
fertile. This is the interpretation of Houbigant, Le Clerc, 
Castilio, DeVence, Purver, Boothrovd, and others. 



and only to be appeased by blood. He knew 
that all the blessings promised to Abraham 
must descend in the line of Isaac, who had 
no sons but himself and Jacob ; and, there- 
fore, while in slaying his crafty brother he 
would gratify the hatred he now felt towards 
him, he inferred that he should by the same 
act become the heir of all. Him, therefore, 
he determined to destroy ; but out of regard 
to his father, whom he sincerely loved, he 
determined not to execute his purpose while 
he lived — the rather that his end seemed 
then, to himself and others, to be at no great 
distance — though he actually lived above 
forty years after these trying events. 

The blunt and open character of Esau 
disqualified him from keeping his own secret. 
His intention transpired, and was reported 
to Rebekah ; who was seriously alarmed, and 
proposed to Jacob that he should proceed, 
secretly, to her brother Laban, in Mesopota- 
mia, and remain with him a little while till 
Esau's resentment should subside. On this 
the safety, not of one only, but both her 
sons, seemed to her to depend. For although 
we do not learn of any judicial tribunals 
which could have undertaken to punish 
Esau for the act of murder he contemplated, 
there is no doubt that he would have been 
amenable to the fatal and resistless operation 
of the law of Thar, or blood-avenging, which 
existed from the most early ages, and which 
still, by its action upon the fears of the wild 
tribes of the desert, and indeed of all the 
less civilised tribes of western Asia, from the 
shores of the Red Sea to the Caucasian 
mountains, keeps in check their fiercer pas- 
sions, and makes them backward to shed 
blood. By this law the nearest relative of 
the slain party is bound to pursue the slayer, 
and to rest not — never to let his purpose 
sleep — till he has exacted life for life and 
blood for blood. In the present case, if 
Esau had effected his intention, after the 
death of his father, the duty of the goel, or 
blood-avenger, Jacob having no children of 
his own, would have devolved upon the 
eldest son of Ishrnael — that brother of Isaac 
having, at this time, himself been dead 
several years ; and that this duty would be 
inexorably executed, the purely Bedouin 



Cr o 



CHAP. III.] 



ABRAHAM ISAAC. 



63 



habits of the Ishmaelite race must have 
rendered unquestionable. Hence the anxiety 
of Rebekah lest she should lose both her sons 
in one day, for, at the least, Esau must have 
taken to flight — must have become a fugitive 
and a vagabond, like Cain, the instant he 
slew his brother. 

In proposing the plan of Jacob's journey 
to Mesopotamia to Isaac, his wife thought it 
right to spare him this new trouble ; and 
therefore she merely stated what was doubt- 
less one of the reasons which made the 
journey the more desirable in her eyes, 
though it was not the only one or the 
principal. She reminded him of the marriage 
of Esau to the daughters of Canaanites, and 
what a serious calamity it would be if Jacob, 
now the recognised heir of the promises, 
should be led to follow his brother's example. 
As his shrewd wife suspected, Isaac caught 
at this, and himself proposed the very plan j 
she had herself arranged. He sent for Jacob, J 
and charged him not to take a wife from 
among the Canaanites, but to proceed to 
Padan-Aram [Mesopotamia], and there seek j 
a wife among his cousins, the daughters of j 
Laban, his mother's brother. He ended with i 
the broad and cheerful recognition of Jacob 1 
as the heir of the promises, and blessing him ! 
as such. 



When Abraham sent his servant the same 
journey to get a wife for his son Isaac, there 
I were ten camels, and servants, and precious 
| things ; but now the son himself sets forth, 
alone and on foot, with no other equipment 
j than the staff which he carried in his hand, 
j The secrecy which the resentment of Esau 
; rendered necessary accounts sufficiently for 
{ the difference. 

Esau, who was probably absent on one of 
j his huntings when Jacob departed, learnt in 
due time, probably from his father, where 
and on what errand his brother was gone ) 
and seeing from this how distasteful his own 
marriages had been to Isaac, he, thinking to 
mend the matter, and, to ingratiate himself 
with his father, went and married one of the 
daughters of Ishmael. This is usually 
described as one of the hasty blunders of 
Esau: but we do not see that it was. 
According to Bedouin usages, this was the 
most proper marriage he could form, and, in 
fact, the hand of Ishmael's eldest daughter 
was due to the eldest son of Isaac as a 
matter of right, and, as to religious belief 
and practice, the house of Ishmael was 
probably at this time as pure, and probably 
more so than that of Laban. The necessity 
for sending to Mesopotamia for a wife only 
existed in the case of Isaac, who otherwise 




[Orrentdl Shepherds.] 



64 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book I. 



must have married a woman of alien race. 
But now there were grand-daughters of 
Abraham, through Hagar and Keturah — 
nearer in blood and, at least, as suitable for 
wives to the sons of Isaac as were the 
daughters of Laban, the resort to whom now 
by Jacob does not prove that no other resort 
was lawful, but was the result of circum- 
stances, among which may be reckoned the 
fact that Isaac himself had been supplied 
thence, together with the natural partialities 
of Rebekah for her own family in Padan- 
Aram. If no other course were proper in 
this generation, neither would any other 
have been so in the next ; and yet not one 
of Jacob's twelve sons took a wife from the 



house of Laban. After that, the question 
became simplified ; for the sons and daughters 
of these twelve sons could and did inter- 
marry. But notwithstanding this view of 
the matter, exonerative of Esau, it was 
doubtless for wise purposes that, while the 
heirship of the promises was still vested in a 
single person, that person should be compelled 
by circumstances so to marry as to obviate 
all danger of that intermixture of the chosen 
line with even proximate tribes, which it 
was a part of the divine plan to prevent. 

Dates. — We are now arrived at the year 
of the world 3495, the year before Christ 
1916 ; the year of Isaac 137, the year of 
Esau and Jacob 77. 



CHAPTER IV. 
JACOB. 



Jacob proceeded on his long journey to 
Mesopotamia, making, in the first place, for 
the fords of the Jordan, which river his 
course obliged him to cross. On the second 
or third evening he arrived in the neigh- 
bourhood of a town which bore the name of 
Luz, on account of the numerous almond- 
trees which grew there ; and here he de- 
termined to spend the night . 

Having procured from the neighbouring 
town such refreshments (including oil) as he 
needed for his present relief and for his use 
in the morning, he lay down to rest, placing 
a stone under his head for a pillow. He 
appears to have been in a dejected state of 
mind, occasioned by the recent separation 
from his mother and father, the prospect of 
the toilsome journey before him, and the 
uncertainties of his future lot. But now he 
was cheered by a dream which conveyed to 
him a lively notion of the watchful provi- 

I dence of God, and assured him of the Divine 
protection. He beheld the similitude of a 
ladder, which seemed to connect earth with 
heaven ; and on this ladder he saw the 

i angels of God descending and ascending, 



proceeding on and returning from the mis- 
sions entrusted to them by One who appeared 
above, and who, at last, spoke to Jacob 
himself, and, after announcing himself as 
the Jehovah of his fathers, Abraham and 
Isaac, proceeded to recognise him as the 
heir of the promises, and to renew to him, in 
express terms, the covenant made with Abra- 
ham ; and then, mercifully compassionating 
his depressed state and forlorn condition, 
the Divine vision added, — " And, behold, I 
am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest, and will bring 
thee again into this land : for I will not 
leave thee, until I have done that which I 
have spoken to thee of." Jacob, who had 
not before been favoured with any manifes- 
tations of that Jehovah of whose greatness 
and goodness, and of whose especial regard 
for their race, he had often heard Abraham 
and Isaac speak, awoke with deep awe, and 
exclaimed, " Surely Jehovah is in this place, 
and I knew it not." And then he added, 
with some terror, "How dreadful is this 
place ! This is none other but the house of 
God, and this is the gate of heaven." In 



chap. nr. 



JACOB. 



allusion to what he said on this occasion, 
the place was thenceforward called Bethel 
[the house of God] by himself and his de- 
scendants, in which name the more ancient 
one of Luz was soon lost. 

Jacob arose early in the morning, and his 
first act was to set up, or plant on one of its 
ends, the stone which had served him for a 
bolster. Upon the top of this he poured 
some of his oil, and in doing so, vowed a 
remarkable and characteristic vow which 
cannot be adequately represented but in its 
own language : — If God will be with me, 
and will keep me in this way that I go, and 
will give me bread to eat, and raiment to 
put on, so that I come again to my father's 
house in peace ; then shall Jehovah be my 
God ; and this stone^ which I have set up for a 
pillar, shall be God's house : and of all that 
thou shalt give me I will surely give the 
tenth unto thee." The allusion to the mean- 
ing with which the stone was set up is very 
interesting, as it offers the first historical 
trace of a custom of placing erect stones as 
memorials and evidences of different events 
and actions — of victories, providences, vows, 
contracts, boundaries, and sepulchres. In 
some of these meanings — and more especially 
as votive and sepulchral memorials — this old 
patriarchal custom exists everywhere to this 
day, either in actual usage or in traces of 
one extinct ; and hence, although the Druids 
preserved this custom also, it cannot be 
called druidical*, distinctively, like some 
other of the old Hebrew usages concerning 
stones, which we find at a later day almost 
confined to the Druids. 

Jacob's declared intention of devoting to 
God a tenth of the substance which might 
be given to him, probably means that he 
would expend that proportion in the building 
of altars, in offering sacrifices, and in the 
performance of such other acts, if any, in 
which the patriarchal religion allowed men 
to consider that they rendered God service. 

Jacob proceeded on his journey, and in 

* As we shall have occasion to use this word, to avoid 
the necessity of circumlocution, we may as well intimate 
at once that, although in strict propriety it could not he so 
used, we shall employ it to express those customs of the 
old Hebrews which the druidical religion preserved in 
a long subsequent age. 



due time arrived at the famous old well of 
Chaxran, where Eliezer had first seen Re- 
bekah. Here he found some shepherds of 
that place waiting with their flocks. Being 
himself well versed in all the usages of 
pastoral life, he was struck that they did not 
at once water their flocks ; but, on inquiring 
the reason, was told that different flocks were 
entitled to water from that well, and that 
the well could not be opened till they were 
all on the ground, or rather, till all the 
shepherds of those flocks were present. Con- 
tinuing to talk with them, he learned that 
they knew Laban, that he was well, and that 
his home flock was kept by his daughter 
Rachel, for whose presence they were then 
actually waiting before they opened the 
well. While they were thus in talk, Rachel 
came with her sheep, and the kind stranger 
— the forlorn son of a wealthy house — 
hastened to render a mark of civility and 
attention which was probably not less accept- 
able to her than were the ornaments of gold 
which her aunt had received from his 
father's servant at that place ; with the 
ease of an accomplished shepherd, he re- 
moved the stone from the mouth of the well 
and watered her flock for her ; and when he 
had done this, he drew near to her and 
kissed her, and told her, with many tears, 
that he was her own cousin, the son of Re- 
bekah, her aunt. Rachel ran to bear these 
tidings to her father, who instantly hastened 
to meet his sister's son, and embraced him, 
and kissed him, and brought him into the 
house. The reception which Laban gave to 
one who came in so humble a guise, raises 
the generally unamiable and self-seeking 
character of Rebekah's brother considerably 
in our esteem, and satisfies us that, within 
certain limits — which soon enough appear, — 
he wished to show all possible kindness and 
just treatment to Jacob. His tone did not 
alter when he understood how matters really 
stood with Rebekah's son : " Surely thou art 
my bone and my flesh," was his emphatic 
answer to his nephew's statement, which 
probably concluded with an intimation that 
Isaac did not know there was any other 
object in Jacob's journey than to obtain a 
wife from the house of Nahor. 



66 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book 



Among people of such habits of life as we 
are now describing, it would be a reproach 
to any man, when on a visit, not to take his 
full share in the occupations and pursuits of 
the family ; and the estimation in which he 
is held will be proportioned to the dis- 
position and power which he manifests of 
making himself useful to his friends. Jacob 
accordingly exerted himself, during the first 
month of his stay, with such good effect as 
made a strong impression upon his uncle, 
who was too shrewd a man not to perceive 
that, probably from his having spent all his 
life in tents, and latterly in active super- 
intendence of his father's flocks, Jacob had 
such a very superior knowledge of pastoral 
affairs as would render his services of much 
value. Therefore, at the end of the month, 
he spoke to him, observing that since he 
seemed likely to make some stay, he was 
unwilling to take advantage of their re- 
lationship to receive the benefit of his assist- 
ance without price ; but was anxious to 
make him whatever recompense he desired. 
Now Jacob during his stay had not been 
unobservant of Laban's two daughters. The 
eldest of them, Leah, was afflicted with a 
disorder in her eyes, but seems in other 
respects to have been an agreeable and 
sensible woman. The other, Rachel, whom 
he had first seen at the well, was very beau- 
tiful, and as she participated in the care of 
the flock, there were more points of sympathy 
between her and Jacob, and he saw more of 
her than of Leah, who, as the eldest daughter, 
was much engaged in the household affairs. 
On all these grounds it was natural that the 
heart of Jacob preferred Rachel j indeed, he 
loved her deeply. 

To the fair and even liberal proposal of 
Laban, his nephew therefore made answer, 
that he only desired that Rachel might be 
given to him for wife ; and that, seeing he 
had not wherewith to pay for her the price* 
which custom required, he was willing to 
give his services for seven years, as an 
equivalent. Laban readily closed with this 



♦ Lest any reader should be offended at the use of tins 
word, we may mention that this is the correct and formal 
term for the consideration which the bridegroom is obliged 
to make to the family from which he takes a daughter or 
sister. 



proposal ; and the arrangement thus made, 
is, to this day, not unusual in Syria with 
young men who have nothing but their 
services to offer the family from which they 
desire a wife. 

Usage required that a month should pass 
between the formation and completion of 
such an agreement ; and when the month 
was expired, Jacob demanded his wife. On 
this, Laban assembled a large party of his 
friends, to keep the wedding-feast, which, it 
seems, even at this early date, lasted during 
a week. On the first evening, Laban led his 
veiled daughter to the chamber of her hus- 
band, which was left in darkness : thus it 
was not until the morning that Jacob dis- 
covered that the wily Laban, instead of giving 
him his beloved Rachel, had brought him 
his less favoured daughter, Leah. This was 
enough to throw a meeker man than J acob 
into a passion; but, on being reproached 
with his con d act, Laban coolly answered, 
that it was not the custom of the country to 
give the younger daughter in marriage before 
the elder. This is so conformable to oriental 
ideas, that it is very likely to have been 
true ; but it was his duty to have told this 
to his nephew when the agreement was made, 
instead of forcing upon him, for a wife, a 
woman he did not wish to marry, in the 
place of one whom he truly loved. But his 
real object was to get rid first of his least 
attractive daughter, as well as to secure a 
longer claim upon the valued services of his 
sister's son. Accordingly he added, that, 
when he had completed the matrimonial 
week due to Leah, there would be no ob- 
jection to his taking Rachel also, provided 
he would undertake to serve another seven 
years for her sake. Circumstanced as he 
was by the guile of Laban, Jacob was com- 
pelled to agree to this ; and we are touch- 
ingly told that the further seven years which 
he served for Rachel, " seemed to him but a 
few days, for the love he had to her." 

To Jaeob's former indifference towards 
Leah, was now added the disgust which her 
evident participation in the fraud practised 
upon him was calculated to inspire. But it 
turned out that Leah had a ground of exul- 
tation over her favoured rival, in the fad 



CHAP. IV.] 



JACOB. 



67 



that she bore four sons to her husband, while j 
her sister was barren. Finding this to be 
the case, Rachel bethought herself of giving 
to Jacob her handmaid, named Bilhah, whom 
she had received from her father on her 
marriage, under the notion that the children 
which this woman might bear would be 
counted as hers. It will be remembered 
that Sarah had given her handmaid, Hagar, 
to Abraham, under a similar idea. The plan 
so far succeeded, that Bilhah became the 
! mother of two sons, both of whom received 
from Rachel names expressive of her exulta- 
tion. Leah, finding how her sister's plan 
answered, and that she had herself ceased to 
bear children, persuaded Jacob to take also 
her handmaid, Zilpah, and by her he had 
two sons ; then Leah herself recommenced 
bearing, and had two sons and a daughter. 
At last the cries of Rachel herself were heard 
in heaven ; her womb was opened, and she 
< conceived, and bare a son — J oseph, the 
j favoured and beautiful, who fills so large a 
! place in the history of the patriarchs. Thus 
j the fourteen years passed away, during which 
j Jacob must have been much disturbed by 
the bickerings and heart-burnings of his 
Avives ; and at the end of which he found 
himself the father of eleven sons and a 
daughter *. 

Jacob's full term of service being now 
expired, he applied to Laban for leave to 
return to the land of Canaan with his wives 
and children. But Laban begged him to 
prolong his stay, "for I have learned by 
experience," said he, "that Jehovah hath 
blessed me for thy sake." This gave Jacob 
the opportunity of hinting that he fully 
knew the value of his own services to his 
uncle, whom he reminded of the compara- 
tively small extent of his pastoral property 
on his own arrival, and how amazingly it 

* It may be useful to add here their names, with the 
years of their birth (stated with reference to the age of 
their father) annexed, as settled by Dr. Hales, that the 
reader may be clearly aware of their relative ages. By 
Leah— Reuben, 78, Simeon, 80, Levi, 82, Judah,83; by 
Bilhah — Dan, 84, Naphtali, 85; by Zilpah — Gad, 86, 
Asher, 87; by Leah again— Issachar, 88, Zsbulon, 89, 
Din-.h, 90; by Rachel— Joseph , 91, Benjamin, 104. We 
add the name of Benjamin to complete the list, though he 
was not born till some years after the date at which we are 
now arrived. 



had since been increased — not, indeed, 
through his exertions, though nothing had 
been wanting on his part, — but through the 
Lord's blessing on his account. He added 
that it was now become his duty to provide 
for his own house also. In answer to this, 
Laban intimated his willingness to grant 
him whatever remuneration for his future 
services he might himself require. Jacob 
then made the extraordinary proposal that, 
seeing shepherds were usually paid for their 
services from the produce of the flock, his 
payment should consist of all the dark sheep 
and all the party-coloured goats which might 
hereafter be born in the flocks under his 
care, after all the animals so coloured in the 
existing flock were separated and committed | 
to other hands. As the proportion of animals j 
of such colours is in all cases small in a flock 
of Western Asia, and as the ordinary physical j 
chances for the propagation of those colours j 
seemed to be diminished by the proposed j 
separation, Laban readily agreed to a plan j 
which seemed so advantageous to himself, j 
He made the stipulated separation, and gave j 
the separated flock to the charge of his sons, j 
directing them to keep at three days' dis- 
tance from the pastures which Jacob fre- j 
quented. 

But Laban had soon occasion to find, if he j 
had not found it before, that his nephew was ] 
fully a match for himself in craft. The 1 
terms of the agreement, as Laban understood i 
them, must have been, that hazard, operating { 
with certain drawbacks, would adequately j 
remunerate Jacob for his care of the flock 
of which his uncle was the proprietor. The 
intention, therefore, with which Rebekah's 
son made his proposal, as indicated by its 
subsequent execution, speaks far more in 
behalf of his superior knowledge of the 
shepherd's art, and is much more in unison 
with his early operations upon Esau and 
upon his own father, than it is moral, or, in 
any sense, honest. His profound knowledge 
of the habits of the animals which form the 
pastor's wealth, put him in possession of the 
fact, that the powerful thirst which, in those 
warm climates, the animals necessarily feel 
by the time they are brought to the wells 
for water, makes the time of drinking one of 



68 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK I 



the highest excitement to them, as mani- 
fested by the disposition which, in the proper 
season, they then show to the act of pro- 
pagating their kind. This state of excite- 
ment lays their imaginations open — so to 
speak — to receive impressions from the 
slightest and apparently the most inadequate 
causes ; and that, when the impression has 
been received, it may operate upon the colour 
of the issue of those animals in which colour 
varies, few physiologists will question. To 
avail himself of his knowledge of these facts, 
Jacob took rods of the poplar, hazel, and 
plane, and peeled white streaks in them by 
laying bare the whiteness of the rods. Thus 
prepared, he set them in the troughs from 
which the flocks were watered ; and the 
unusual appearance at that well-known and 
favourite place could not fail to draw their 
attention strongly at that most exciting time 
— when they drank and also coupled — which 
we have indicated. The result was, that the 
young which were conceived under such cir- 
cumstances were of the colours which Jacob 
required, and which he was entitled to set 
apart as his own property ; and as he only 
tried this operation upon the stronger 
animals of the flock, leaving the weak ones 
to the course of nature, it happened that not 
only did his share become very large, but 
the stronger animals of the flock were his, 
and the weaker Laban's. 

This transaction has been a subject of 
various and warm discussion. The natural 
adequacy of the cause to produce the as- 
signed effect has been denied by parties 
entirely opposed to each other, — by sceptics, 
who endeavour to throw doubt on the truth 
of the scriptural narrative, and by truly 
pious persons, who believe that the result 
proceeded from a miraculous interposition of 
Divine power, and that the operations were 
in themselves nothing but as sanctified and 
directed by God. To both parties we would 
say, that we much doubt whether they and 
the authorities on which they depend knew 
so much of the nature of sheep and goats as 
did Jacob, who for nearly a century had 
lived constantly among the flocks ; and that 
a denial ought to be made with diflidence 
which is founded on observations made in 



European countries, where, for the most part, 
the animals themselves are so differently 
circumstanced, and their natural charac- 
teristics less actively developed than under 
the skies of Syria and Mesopotamia, and in 
the broad and warm plains in which they 
feed, and under the modes of treatment to 
which they are subject there. And to the 
latter we would beg to remark, that we are 
not told that God did direct Jacob to take 
this course ; and the deep reverence with 
which we regard that great and holy name 
makes us shrink with intense repugnance 
from such attempts to exonerate Jacob at 
the expense of making Him a party in this 
most fraudulent proceeding. It is by such 
proceedings as this — by attempts to clear the 
characters of the eminent persons of Biblical 
history from all stain, by connecting the 
Divine sanction with their most weak or 
culpable actions — that more real and vital 
injury has been done to the cause of truth 
than by all the sneers and insinuations 
which avowed scorners of revelation ever 
uttered. For ourselves, this proceeding- 
seems to bear, from beginning to end, the 
aspect of a complicated and well-planned 
piece of dishonesty. The proposal was 
Jacob's own, when Laban left him the choice 
of his own terms ; and the very singularity 
of it suggests that he was well aware that 
he possessed the means, of obtaining a far 
greater benefit from it than any one else 
could have supposed likely, or than would 
have been possible under the operation of 
ordinary circumstances ; and the real dis- 
honesty of employing artificial means for 
his purpose, is greatly enhanced by his 
measure for securing all the stronger animals 
for himself, and leaving the weak to the 
original owner of the flock. The real excuse 
for Jacob, and for many of the unseemly 
actions into which some most venerable 
persons in the Hebrew history did at times 
fall, lies in this — first, that those eminent 
persons whom we fondly picture to ourselves 
as somewhat more than men, were men only, 
and often, as in themselves, very weak men : 
and, secondly, that they were Orientals ; — 
for it must not be concealed, that in the 
east, however pure may be the religious 



CHAP. IV.] 



JACOB. 



69 



principle, and lofty the religious feeling, and 
however strong the pride of honour, there is 
now, and ever has been, such a weakness of 
the moral sense as is not without much pain 
and difficulty comprehended by those who 
have from infancy breathed in a moral at- 
mosphere which Christianity has purified, 
and which, by its insensible influences, keeps 
in a state of moral healthiness even those 
who have not founcl therein the breath of 
life. 

We are thoroughly convinced that, at the 
present day, there are, in Western Asia, and, 
least of all among the Bedouins, very few 
men, even among persons of character and 
station, who would not to the end of their 

j lives make their boast of such splendid ex- 
ploits in overreaching as those which passed 
between Laban and Jacob. They would be 
incapable of seeing anything more in them 
than evidences of their own ability and 
cleverness ; and their auditors, labouring 

I under the same incapacity, would, to a man, 
listen with deep interest and admiration. 

The story of Laban's cheating Jacob into 
taking the wrong wife would be received 
with rapture ; and Jacob himself would be 
regarded rather with contempt than pity, 
until the story of his dealings with the sheep 
and goats intrusted to his care, which would 
not fail to be heard with shouts of delight, 
should turn the scale of admiration in his 
favour. 

Now, from this time forward, Jacob " in- 
creased exceedingly," and in the course of 
about six years, he " had much cattle, and 
maid-servants, and men-servants, and camels, 
and asses." This prosperity excited the 
envy of Laban's family, and his sons were 
heard to say, "Jacob hath taken away all 
that was our father's ; and of that which 
was our father's hath he gotten all this 
glory." Laban, also, as might be expected, 
looked much less pleasant than in former 
times. Jacob, therefore, began to think it 
high time for him to return to the land of 
Canaan ; and any doubts on the subject were 
removed by a Divine command to that effect. 
As he suspected that Laban would not let 
him withdraw unmolested with all the sub- 
stance he had acquired, he resolved to go 



away without notice ; and as his uncle was 
absent at a sheep-shearing, the opportunity 
was too favourable to be neglected. But 
first he consulted his wives, calling them 
forth into the fields, that they might not be 
overheard. He stated the matter fully to 
them, and had the satisfaction of finding 
that they entered entirely into his views. 
He therefore hastened his preparations for 
departure, in the course of which Rachel 
managed to secrete the small superstitious 
images, called Teraphim, which belonged to 




era p lum 



her father. This she did, most probably, for 
the purpose of continuing, in the strange 
land to which she was going, that super- 
stitious use of them, or reference to them, in 
which she had been brought up. 

All being ready, Jacob mounted his wives 
and children upon camels, and sped away 
toward the Euphrates with his flocks and 
herds, and all his substance. Having crossed 
the great river, he pursued his way for 
several days, until he arrived at the moun- 
tains of Gilead, where he pitched his tent, 
and resolved to spend the time usually 
allotted to rest. 

Laban did not hear of Jacob's flight until 
the third day after he started ; but no 
sooner did he learn it, than he called to- 
gether the men of his family and household, 
and commenced a rapid pursuit. That he 
persisted in this pursuit for seven days, 
during which he traversed all the distance 
from Chairan to the mountains of Gilead, 
shows the inveteracy of his purpose, which, 
it seems, was to take from Jacob all the 



70 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book I. 



property with which he had departed. But 
the night before he overtook the fugitive in 
Gilead, God appeared to him in a dream, and 
warned him, saying, " Take heed that thou 
speak not to Jacob either good or bad." 
This changed his purpose entirely ; for such 
an injunction as this, even Laban dared not 
disobey ; but being now, as he knew, so near 
; to his fugitive son-in-law and daughters, he 
I determined still to follow and seek an inter- 
| view with them. 

When they met, some strong recrimina- 
: tion passed between Laban and Jacob. The 
f.-rmer professed especial indignation that 
his daughters had been hurried away, like 
" captives taken with the sword," and that 
! no opportunity had been allowed him of 
! giving one farewell kiss to them and their 
! children, and of sending them away with 
j music and with songs. And after declaring 
: that only the vision of the past night pre- 
! vented him from making use of the power he j 
j possessed, he added, with some heat, "And j 
| now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, 
because thou sore longedst after thy father's j 
house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my 
gods?" Jacob, who was really ignorant of 
Rachel's theft, disavowed all knowledge of 
his teraphim, and declared that any one in 
i whose possession they were found should be 
put to death. He also told Laban to go with 
his friends and make a strict search every- 
where, to convince himself that there was 
nothing in the camp which he could justly 
claim for his own. His uncle took him at 
his word, and proceeded to make a very 
strict search. It seems that tents had only 
i been pitched for the accommodation of the 
women and children, and that each of Jacob's 
wives had her separate tent. Laban went 
into each of them ; but as he entered that of 
Rachel the last, she had an opportunity of 
hiding the teraphim under the pack of her 
camel, and seated herself upon it, as Bedouin 
women often do when enjoying rest on a 
journey : and when her father entered, she, 
with much more art than decorum, accounted 
for not rising to receive him, by such a state- 
ment as to her condition, as she knew would 
not only excuse . her in that, but would in- 
duce him speedily to leave her tent. The 



plan answered : and Laban returned with a 
confession that he was unable to find that 
for which he sought. On this, J acob, who 
before had been more disposed to excuse 
than vindicate his retreat, took a high tone 
in his turn. He stated how long and faith- 
fully he had served Laban — fourteen years 
I for his two daughters, and six years for his 
| cattle, and alleged that his wages had seve- 
I ral times been altered, when it was found 
that the agreed mode of payment proved 
more productive than had been foreseen. 
There are many traits in the preceding 
statement illustrative of the manners of that 
age and state of life; and one further pas- 
sage is too descriptive of the condition and 
duties of an eastern shepherd to be other 
than literally given : — " That which was torn 
of beasts," Jacob sai I, " I brought not unto 
thee ; I bare the loss of it ; of my hand didst 
thou require it, whether it was stolen by 
day, or stolen by night. Thus I was ; in the 
day the drought consumed me, and the frost 
by night ; and my sleep departed from mine 
eyes." Laban did not attempt to answer ; 
but gave a change to the subject by saying, 
that although he considered all he saw to be 
his, yet, as a father, he had no desire to in- 
terfere with the prosperity of his daughters 
and their children. He then proposed that 
they should enter into a covenant of future 
peace ; and the mode in which it was formed 
and established will seem singularly inte- 
resting to those who inquire into old usages 
and the ideas connected with them — par- 
ticularly those to which the name of Druidi- 
cal has been assigned. Jacob, as he had 
done at Bethel, set up a tall stone on its end ; 
and he also directed his people to collect 
large stones to form a heap. They all sat 
down then, and ate beside or upon this heap : 
it being a "Very early and still subsisting 
custom for those who entered into a friendly 
covenant to eat and drink together. And as 
it was also customary to impose significant 
and commemorative names upon the stony 
memorials which were erected on such coca- 
s' ons, Laban, in his Syriac dialect, imposed 
I the name of Jegar-sahadutha upon the heap ; 
! and Jacob called it Galeed, both of which 
! names have the same meaning of, the wit- 



CHAP. IV.] 



JACOB. 



71 



ness heap ; but to the erect stone, the name 
of Mizpeh, the watch, or watch-tower was 
given. The significant application of these 
terms is derived from the manner in which 
they were employed by Laban. " This heap 
is a witness,"' he said to Jacob, " between 
me and thee this day," and, with reference 
to the erected stone, " Jehovah watch be- 
tween me and thee, when we are absent one 
from another." After thus establishing these 
stony evidences, Laban, as the elder and 
superior party, continued to state the terms 
of the covenant ; which were, — that Jacob 
should treat his daughters kindly, and not 
take any other wives besides them, which last 
is a remarkable and significant stipulation 
which will not escape the reader's special 
notice. "Behold this heap," continued 
Laban, " and behold this pillar, which I have 
cast between me and thee ; let this heap be 
witness, and this pillar be witness, that I 
will not pass over this heap to thee, and that 
thou shalt not pass over this heap and this 
pillar unto me, for harm." Laban then in- 
voked the God of Abraham, and of Nahor, to 
judge between them ; and Jacob called upon 
the Reveued Oxe of his father Isaac. 

In the account of this transaction the idea 
of the erected stone and the heap being wit- 
nesses is so repeatedly produced, as clearly to 
evince their intention. These memorials be- 
long to an age in which written bonds and 
contracts were unthought of, or, at least, 
were, not in use among the people with whom 
the early Scriptural history make3 us ac- 
quainted. If one in those days saw a stone 
or a number of stones arranged in such a 
manner as to suggest that they could not 
have been so placed by accident, he, knowing 
the custom of his own time and country, 
would be aware that the erection was in- 
tended as the monument of some covenant 
or vow, and he would respect it as a sacred 
thing, not to be disturbed or injured by him. 
The name which it bore would suggest the 
object of the erection, and if he desired 
farther information, he would seldom fail to 
learn, from the people near the place or in 
the district, the traditionary account of the 
occasion on which the name had been im- 
posed, and, consequently, the particulars of 



the transaction which the name and the 
erection were designed to commemorate. 
Thus these stones were more effective wit- 
nesses or memorials than the inhabitants of 
a highly civilized and densely peopled coun- 
try would, at the first view, be inclined to 
suppose. 

Jacob slaughtered some sheep in the even- 
ing, and made a feast for Laban's party and 
his own. They spent the night together 
among these mountains, which thencefor- 
ward took the name of Gilead ; and Laban 
set out in the morning on his return to 
Padan-Aram. 

No sooner was Jacob relieved from the 
anxiety which the apprehended pursuit and 
actual appearance of Laban had occasioned, 
than his mind was much pressed by the re- 
collection of the danger that might still be 
apprehended from the old resentments of his 
brother Esau, who, as he knew, had already 
established himself in the land of Seir, where 
he had become the chief of a powerful clan. 
But when he next formed his camp, after 
journeying among the mountains of Gilead, 
he received much encouragement from the 
vision of another great camp near his own, j 
from which the angels of God approached 
towards him *. This he rightly interpreted 
as an assurance of the Divine protection, and 
memorialized the event by calling the place 
Mahanaini f . He then, with reassured heart, 
proceeded to take such measures as the 
occasion seemed to require ; and in all these 
his profound knowledge of character, and his 
consummate tact in acting upon it, are 
manifested with singular force. He de- 
termined to send messengers to announce 
his arrival. The distance, which could not 
well be less than a hundred miles, would 
alone be a strong indication of his respect 
for, and his wish to stand well with, his 
brother ; and he took great care that his 
messengers should not injure the effect of 
this measure by their mode of stating their 
errand, but instructed them in the form of 
words which they were to employ, every 

* To this the Psalmist appears to allude: — " The angel 
of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him." 
Psa. xxxiv. 7. 

+ The [two] camps. 



72 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book I, 



syllable of which was admirably calculated 
to assure Esau that he was very far from 
pretending to any personal superiority in 
virtue of his purchased birthright, but, on 
the contrary, looked up to his elder brother 
with great respect : and lest he should 
imagine that he was returning as a needy 
adventurer to claim a temporal inheritance, 
and to devour the substance of their com- 
mon father, the men were particularly 
charged to expatiate on the wealth which he 
had acquired in Padan-Aram *. 

The messengers returned in due time with- 
out any verbal answer from Esau, but with 
the alarming announcement, " We came to 
thy brother Esau, and also he cometh to 
meet thee, and four hundred men with him." 

Apprehending that Esau could not be 
coming with so formidable a force without 
the most hostile intentions, Jacob was much 
distressed at this intelligence. He cried to 
God for protection, in a most feeling and 
even pathetic address : and then, with his 
usual prudence and decision, proceeded to 
take such measures as the emergency seemed 
to require. In the first place he divided his 
company and possessions into two bands, 
between which he purposed to place a wide 
marching interval, that if any purposes of 
injury or vengeance should be manifested by 
Esau on meeting the foremost division, the 
chance of escape might be left open to that 
which remained behind, and which contained 
all that he held dearest and most valuable. 
Nor was he insensible of the effect which a 
preceding exhibition of presents might have 
in mollifying the heart of Esau, and in pre- 
paring him to receive his brother favourably. 
He therefore set apart a most noble present 
of 200 she-goats and 20 he-goats, 200 ewes 

* Jacob thus charged his messengers:— " Thus shall ye 
speak unto my lord Esau ; ' Thy servant Jacob saith thus : 
I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now: 
And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and men-servants, and 
women-servants : and I have sent to tell my lord, that I 
may find grace in thy sight.' " We are persuaded that the 
carefully guarded terms of respect, " thy servant," " my 
lord," were purposely intended to assuage the bitter feel- 
ings which seem to have been created in the mind of Esau 
by the knowledge that Isaac in the blessms intended for 
him, but which his brother had received, ha.l made Jacob 
"lord over his brethren;" Isaac himself n.id told Esau 
that, in saying, " Behold, I have made him [Jacob] thy 
lord." 



and 20 rams, 30 milch camels with their 
colts, 40 heifers and 10 steers, 20 she-asses 
and 10 foals, — which list, while it suggests 
some idea of the large pastoral wealth which 
Jacob had acquired in Padan-Aram, is par- 
ticularly valuable from the indication which 
it offers of the numerical proportions of the 
animals by which that wealth was composed. 
The milch camels and their colts were espe- 
cially valuable. The animals thus selected 
— which, we may be sure, were the best and 
finest of Jacob's flocks and herds — were to 
go first of all, and were divided into droves 
with intervals between them, not only to 
make the more imposing display, but to 
afford opportunity for a succession of pacify- 
ing operations upon the temper of Esau. 
For the chief attendant with the first drove 
was carefully taught by Jacob how to deport 
himself and what to say, thus : — " When 
Esau my brother meeteth thee, and asketh 
thee, saying, ' Whose art thou 1 and whither 
goest thou 1 and whose are these before 
thee 1 ' Then thou shalt say, ' They be thy 
servant Jacob's : it is a present unto my lord 
Esau ; and, behold, also he is behind us.' " 
The leaders of the second and following 
droves were instructed to give exactly the 
same answers. This being arranged, they 
were ordered in the evening to cross the 
river Jabbok and proceed on their way. But 
Jacob himself remained still on the other 
side the river, with the reserved division, 
till some hours after, when, while it was still 
night, he arose, and passed all the party over 
that stream. When he was left alone on the 
other side, there came to him, in the form of 
a man, an angel, or rather, as Hosea (xii. 21) 
tells us, the same Divine person who had ap- 
peared to him at Bethel, and engaged for 
some time in a personal struggle with him. 
The stranger withheld himself from over- 
coming, or, indeed, allowed himself to seem 
the weaker party ; but at last he stretched 
forth his hand and struck the hollow of 
Jacob's thigh, when the sinew instantly 
shrank ; and thus he made his superhuman 
power known to the mortal with whom he 
strove. He then said, " Let me go ; for the 
day breaketh :" but Jacob, who at this 
critical moment of his life felt the need of 



JACOB. 



strengthening and relief, answered, " I will 
not let thee go, unless thou bless me." On 
this the stranger told him that his name 
should be not only Jacob but Israel *, be- 
cause as a prince he had power with God, 
and with men also should prevail. He also 
blessed him, after refusing to acquaint him 
with his name. Thus Jacob was taught that 
as he had not been conquered in this contest, 
so neither should he be overcome by the dif- 
ficulties with which he was then threatened. 

Jacob departed from that place as the sun 
rose, aud found that he halted on his thigh 
which had been smitten ; and in memory of 
this, even to our own day, his descendants 
have abstained from eating the part which 
contains that sinew which, under the angel's 
hand, shrunk in the thigh of their fore- 
father. How long his lameness lasted we are 
not told ; but it seems more probable that it 
soon passed away, than that it continued to 
the end of his life, as some suppose. 

Jacob had not proceeded far on his way, 
when he saw his brother approaching in the 
distance with his four hundred men. He 
then hastened to separate his several wives 
and their children in such a manner as 
might most contribute to the safety of those 
who were dearest of all to him. The two 
handmaids and their children went on first, 
then, at some distance, Leah and her 
children, and, last of all, Rachel and Joseph. 
Jacob himself then went on before them all, 
and, as he came near enough, he walked for- 
ward and bowed himself very low, and then 
went on and bowed again, and this re- 
peatedly—after the fashion in which Orientals 
still approach a superior— until they met. 
With what purposes Esau set out to meet 
Jacob no one can know. They may have 
been stern. But he had already passed the 
reverent harbingers of Jacob with their pre- 
sents ; and, now that his long absent brother 
approached thus humbly towards him, the 
heart of the sturdy hunter melted within 
him, all old resentments passed away, and, 
obeying the kindly impulses of his own 
generous nature, he ran to meet him, and 
embraced him, and fell upon his neck, and 
! kissed him. And they both wept. 

* One who has power with God. 



Afterwards, in answer to Esau's inquiries 
about the droves which he had met, Jacob 
very anxiously, and in all sincerity, pressed 
them upon his acceptance : for he seems not 
to have been yet relieved from his apprehen- 
sions ; and he was well aware that for a 
superior to receive a present from an inferior, 
was a well-understood pledge of friendship, 
whereas to decline such an offering, or to re- 
turn it after it had been received, was a com- 
mon mark of dissatisfaction. Esau at first 
refused this costly gift, alleging that he 
already had enough ; but, being much urged 
by Jacob, whose real feeling he probably 
penetrated and wished to relieve, he con- 
sented to take it. 

Esau, taking it for granted that they were 
to go to Mount Seir, proposed to proceed on 
the journey. But this was no part of J acob's 
plan, whose destination was the land of 
Canaan. He, therefore, without saying this, 
evaded compliance with his brother's pro- 
posal, by alleging the necessity which the 
presence of young children, and of the flocks 
and herds with young, imposed upon him of 
proceeding very slowly ; for " if men should 
over drive them one day, all the flock will 
die." He, therefore, begged Esau to go on 
before, at his own speed, and promised to 
follow gently after. His brother yielded to 
the force of these reasons ; but he still pro- 
posed to leave some of his men with him, to 
guide and protect him on the way. But 
Jacob, who dreaded such turbulent pro- 
tectors, whose presence would also interfere 
with the execution of his plan, and who only 
wished himself fairly rid of the whole party, 
excused himself from this also, and at last 
Esau departed with all his people, fully ex- 
pecting that Jacob would soon rejoin him in 
the land of Seir. But he was no sooner out 
of sight, than Jacob turned his course west- 
ward towards the Jordan. Why he did not 
cross that river and enter the land of Canaan, 
and why he allowed several years to pass 
before he went to his father, we have no 
means of knowing. But when he arrived at 
a favourable situation, about five miles from 
the eastern bank of the Jordan, he made 
preparations for some stay there, by building 
I for his own household one of the easily con- j 



74 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book I 



structed houses of that time, with numerous 
sheds or booths for his people and cattle. 
From this circumstance the site took the 
name of Succoth, or booths, which was con- 
tinued to a town built in a later day on that 
spot. 

It is thought that J acob did not remain at 
Succoth more than six months before he 
crossed the Jordan and entered the land of 
his future heritage. He arrived safely in the 
neighbourhood of Shechem, where he made 
his first stay in that land. As all the land 
about that city was by this time appropriated, 
and had become of some value to the in- 
habitants, he was obliged to purchase the 
ground on which his camp was formed for 
the value of 100 lambs. Here he built an 
altar, and called it the altar of Elelohe 
Israel * : and here, in long after ages t, was 
shown, and still is, a well which was dug by 
him and bore his name. 

Here Jacob spent eight years in much 
prosperity, and greatly respected by the 
people of the land. By that time his only 
daughter Dinah was about fifteen years of 
age, when, in an evil hour, she went into the 
town, to see the finery of the women, during 
some festival which the Shechemites cele- 
brated. On this occasion she was seen by 
Shechem, the son of Hamor, the prince of 
the place ; and he, being much struck by 
her great beauty, took her to his house, and 
defiled her by force. Yet after this his soul 
still cleaved to. her, and he loved her, and 
spoke kindly to her ; and, anxious to secure 
this treasure to himself, as well as to appease 
the resentment which the damsel's family 
would be sure to entertain, he begged his 
father to go and intercede with hers, that 
Dinah might become his wife. 

Jacob was greatly distressed when he 
heard what had befallen his daughter, who 
still remained in Shechem's house. But his 
sons were then out with the cattle ; and 
as, among the Bedouin races, when a father 
has children by different wives, the full bro- 
thers of a woman are, more than her father, 
the especial guardians of her welfare, her 
avengers if she is wronged, and her punishers 
if she errs, he made no answer to Hamor's 

* The mighty God of Israel. • John iv. 5. 



proposals till his sons came home. They 
were greatly enraged when they heard of 
what had happened to their sister. But 
Hamor proceeded, with considerable address, 
to place his overtures in an advantageous 
light. He dwelt on the deep affection with 
which his son regarded Dinah, and did not 
forget to expatiate on the advantages which 
would result to them from so close an alliance 
with the Shechemites. They could inter- 
marry, he said ; and, while they might 
enrich themselves by establishing a free 
traffic in their pastoral produce with his 
people, they would be at perfect liberty to 
acquire whatever possessions in that town 
and district they desired. Shechem, who was 
himself present, was careful to add, that he 
would readily pay for the damsel whatever 
dowry or gift they might name, and this was, 
according to Bedouin habits, an exceedingly 
liberal proposal, and more likely to be satis- 
factory than all the rest put together. The 
brothers of Dinah affected to be appeased by 
these liberal offers : but in reality they 
nourished in their heart purposes of large 
and terrible revenge ; and the readiness with 
which they conceived on the instant a deep- 
laid plot for effecting their purpose will 
seem most surprising to those who do not 
reflect how much the inventive faculties are 
sharpened by the necessity for prompt de- 
cision, combined with a thirst for blood. 
They answered, that they could not give 
their sister to an uncircumcised man ; neither 
was it possible for them to form such mar- 
riages with the Shechemites as Hamor pro- 
posed, unless every man among them were 
circumcised. With this answer Hamor and 
his son returned to their town, and proceeded 
to the gate — the place of concourse — where 
they proposed a general circumcision as the 
only means of securing the advantages which 
might be obtained by forming a close con- 
nection with Jacob's wealthy tribe. These 
advantages were stated so strongly, that the 
people gave their full assent to the proposal, 
and were accordingly circumcised. Now the 
third day after the operation is that in which 
those who have been circumcised are the 
most distressed by their wound. This fact 
was well known to Jacob's sons ; and, there- 



CHAP. IV.] 



JACOB. 



75 



fore, on the third day, when the Shechemites 
were all in pain and quite unapprehensive of 
danger, Simeon and Levi, the full brothers of 
Dinah, collected such of Jacob's people as 
they could persuade to join them, and en- 
tered the city, where they put Hamor and 
Shechem and every male to the sword ; after 
which they went and took their sister from 
SLechem's house, and returned with her to 
the camp. Their terrible object was accom- 
plished. But then the other sons of Jacob 
entered the city to plunder all its wealth. 
They stripped the slain of their vestures ; 
they made plunder of everything they could 
find in the houses ; they made the women 
and small children captives ; and they drove 
off all the cattle belonging to the Shechemites 
which they could find in the town and its 
surrounding fields. 

Jacob expressed his just abhorrence of 
this most unprincipled and barbarous deed ; 
and he continued to retain a deep sense of it, 
long after all apprehension of the conse- 
quences which might be expected to result 
from it had passed away. Even on his death- 
bed he spoke of it with indignation and 
regret. 

In the first instance Jacob saw great cause 
to fear that the inhabitants of the surround- 
ing districts would unite and fall upon him, 
to avenge this horrid massacre. But his 
doubts respecting the course it might be 
best to take were relieved by a Divine com- 
mand to proceed to Bethel, and dwell there, 
and erect an altar in that place to God, who 
had there appeared to him when he was on 
his road to Padan-Aram. This reminded 
him of the vow which he had made on that 
occasion ; and in obedience to that stricter 
devotion of his household to the Lord's 
service which his vow imposed, and that he 
might the more becomingly approach a place 
to him so venerable, he commanded that all 
the idolatrous or superstitious figures and 
symbols which had been found among the 
spoils of Shechem, or which belonged to any 
of his people, should be given up to him. 
Among these were probably the stolen tera- 
phim of Rachel ; and mention is made of 
ear-pendants, intimating that this favourite 
oriental ornament had already been turned 



to superstitious uses, probably by being worn 
as amulets, and bearing the figures of 
idolatrous symbols — perhaps of the sun or 
moon. He did not destroy these things, as 
might have been expected, but buried them 
secretly under an oak which grew near 
Shechem. By his direction also his house- 
hold purified themselves and put on clean 
apparel ; and this is the first recorded in- 
stance of the religious use of outward puri- 
fications of the person or attire. 

They arrived at Bethel in safety, and 
there Jacob hastened to build an altar to the 
God who answered him in the day of his 
distress, and was with him in the way which 
he went. After this, the Lord appeared to 
him, and confirmed to him and his heirs the 
heritage of the promises made to Abraham, 
and the change of his own name to Israel. 
On the spot where God then appeared to him 
he set up another memorial stone, and shed 
thereon drink-offerings and oil. 

Deborah, the old nurse of Rebekah, died 
during the stay at this place, and was 
buried with all honour, under an oak, which, 
from the lamentations made on that occa- 
sion, was called " the oak of weeping." 
Rebekah herself was before this dead ; and 
it was after her death, probably, that De- 
borah went to Jacob, in order to be with his 
wives, who were her countrywomen. 

No long stay was made at Bethel, and 
from thence Jacob proceeded southward, to 
see his father, whom he had left at Beer- 
sheba, but who was now in the valley of 
Mamre, near Hebron. He journeyed slowly, 
and probably encamped several times on his 
way, although we read of only one encamp- 
ment, which was at a place not far from 
Ephrath [afterwards Bethlehem], where a 
flock tower, erected by some former pastors, 
offered its safety and convenience. Such 
towers still exist, and are still erected. 
From its summit the desert shepherds hold 
their watch afar, and within its walls they 
deposit, in dangerous times, their moveable 
goods, with their women and young children, 
if they do not themselves resort to the 
shelter which it offers. Such are the watch- 
towers—the Mizpehs— which the Scriptures 
so often mention. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BCCK I. 




1! 




[Tower in the Desert.] 

"While Jacob tarried at this place, his 
J beloved Rachel fell in severe labour, and 
died after she had given birth to a son, on 
whom, in her sorrow, she imposed the name 
of Benoni *, — which sad name, but too well 
calculated to bring to mind the loss he had 
sustained, Jacob in the end changed to 
Benjamin t. Here, where she died, Rachel 
I was buried ; and her afflicted husband 
erected over her grave a tall stone as a 
monument. This was long after known as 
" the pillar of Rachel's grave." A modern 
Moslem structure now bears the name of 
Rachel's sepulchre. 

During Jacob's stay at this place another 
calamity befel him ; for Reuben availed 
himself of the opportunities which his 
father's grief afforded to corrupt Bilhah, the 
handmaid whom Rachel had given to her 
husband, and who had borne him two sons. 
Jacob heard of this shameless act ; but it 
does not appear that he took any public 
notice of it, although it made a deep im- 
pression upon his mind, even to his dying 
day, and it cost Reuben his birthright in the 
end. 

Soon after this, Jacob departed from this 



* Son of my sorrow. 

-f Son of my right hand, i. e. one dear to me ; but the 
Samaritan has Benjamin?, " srn of days" i. e. of his father's 
old age. 



sad place, and proceeded to join his aged 
father in Mamre. None of the circumstances 
of the interview are told, nor know we any 
particulars of the intercourse between them 
during the sixteen years they spent toge- 
ther. At the end of those years Isaac died, 
at what was even then considered the good 
old age of 180 years. Esau was then pre- 
sent at Mamre, having probably been sent 
for as his father's last hour approached ; 
and he joined with Jacob in the last solemn 
duty of depositing the remains of their 
parent with those of Abraham and Sarah in 
the cave of Machpelah. We read not of any 
difference between them respecting the 
division of the inheritance. Esau probably, 
by this time, understood that Jacob did not 
consider that the old transactions between 
them disturbed his claim, as the first-born, 
to a double portion of his father's substance ; 
and for any other than present advantages, 
a man of his character was not likely to 
be much concerned. The previous pro- 
perty which the two brothers had acquired, 
now increased by their respective shares of 
Isaac's wealth, was so great, that it was 
found impossible for them to remain toge- 
ther, as the land was unable to sustain their 
flocks. They therefore separated peaceably. 
Esau returned to the land of Seir, leaving 
Jacob encamped in the valley of Mamre. 

The sacred historian, whose example we 
have followed, conducts the life of Isaac to 
its close before he commences the long his- 
tory of Joseph, although its earlier scenes 
took place not long after Jacob's arrival at 
Mamre. This story of his beloved son is so 
intensely interesting ; it is so surprising, and 
withal so natural ; it is so perfect, — every 
minute detail bearing so importantly on the 
ultimate result, that the most simple story 
in the world might, in one point of view, be 
taken for a laboured production of such con- 
summate skill as would, in a fiction, immor- 
talise its author's name ; and the whole is 
withal told with such unaffected simplicity 
and natural pathos, — that through half the 
world the story is impressed from very in- 
fancy upon the hearts of countless thou- I 
sands, and its circumstances are in every 
place as familiar as household words. While I 



CHAP. IV.] 



JACOB. 



the Jew takes pride in the glory of Joseph, ! 
and the Christian admires the wisdom and 
power of God which his history displays, the j 
Moslem is never tired of calculating the 
personal qualities which he ascribes to him 
— his form polished as the box-tree and , 
erect as the cypress,— his locks falling in 
ringlets, — his forehead shining with im- 
mortal beams, — his eyebrows arched, _and 
his eyelashes shading his sleepy eyes, — his 
eyes beaming mildness, the eyelashes darting 
arrows, — his lips smiling and shedding 
sweets, his words "dropping honey," — and 
his pearly teeth, between his ruby lips, 
like the lightning playing upon a western 
sky. 

A story thus familiarly known, and which 
cannot be told in other words than that of 
the original historian, without great injury 
to its force and beauty, it does not seem 
desirable to relate more in detail than may 
be necessary to carry on the historical nar- 
rative, unless when it offers circumstances 
which seem to need explanation, or which 
appear calculated to throw light upon the 
manners and institutions of the time. 

There were many obvious circumstances 
which might concur in rendering the first- 
born of his Rachel particularly dear to 
Jacob. He was the offspring of many 
prayers, his birth had been the subject of 
unbounded joy, and his father had beheld 
him as the constant object of maternal ten- 
derness to his beloved wife. When she died, 
Joseph was also probably the only one of the 
household who could fully sympathise with 
Jacob, and mingle tears with him ; for to 
the others Rachel appears to have been 
more an object of jealousy than love. It 
seems also that Joseph was distinguished 
above all his brethren by his wisdom and his 
engaging disposition, if not by his superior 
beauty. These causes had their full effect. 
Jacob did love Joseph exceedingly ; and was 
at so little pains to conceal his partiality, 
that he bestowed upon him a much finer 
dress than any of his brothers wore — " a 
coat of many colours." The other sons of 
Jacob, some of whom were not much older 
than Joseph, seem, upon the whole, to have 
been a wild and headstrong set of men, 



with less respect for their father than we 
usually find in the east. They were dis- 
pleased at his partiality for Joseph ; and 
their consequent dislike of the youth himself 
grew to absolute hatred when they learned 
to regard him as a spy upon them, from 
finding that, on his return home, after 
having been out with them in the distant 
pastures, he was in the habit of telling his 
father about their evil courses. Joseph also 
began to have dreams, which were easily inter- 
preted to promise to him some future supe- 
riority over them all; and these dreams, 
which he freely related to them, served 
much to strengthen the aversion with which 
he was already regarded by his brothers. 
Even Jacob himself became grave when one 
of tTiese dreams seemed to intimate, that 
not only his other sons, but himself, should, 
at some future day, bow down before Rachel's 
son. That dream, in which J oseph thought 
himself engaged with his brothers in bind- 
ing sheaves in the harvest field *, may pos- 




[ Bmding Sheaves.] 



sibly intimate that Jacob had begun to fol- 
low the example of Isaac in paying some 
attention to agriculture. 

It seems very likely that, while Isaac 
lived, Jacob was careful to keep his flocks at 
a distance, under the care of his sons, lest, if 
his own and his father's were together, Esau, 
when he came to claim his inheritance, might 
be led to fancy that his brother had already 
enriched himself out of Isaac's property. 

* The annexed cut exhibits the early Egyptian process 
of binding sheaves, which was probably not different from 
that used in Syria. 



76 



THE BIBLE EISTOKY. 



[BOOK I. 



Be this as it may, it is certain that, when- 
ever we hear of Jacob's flocks and herds, 
they are always at some place distant from 
the valley of Mamre. So now, two or three 
years after his arrival at that place, we find 
his sons with the flocks northward, near their 
former station at Shechem. And, as they 
had been for some time away, Jacob re- 
solved to send Joseph, who was at home, to 
inquire of their welfare and bring him word 
again. He went. 

When he approached, his brothers knew 
him afar off by his coat of many colours, 
and said one to another, " Behold this 
dreamer cometh!" and, after some confer- 
ence among themselves, they came to the 
resolution of murdering him, and of telling | 
their father that he had been slain by some 
wild beast. " And we shall see," said they, 
"what will become of his dreams." But 
Reuben, whose own recent crime against his 
father made him unwilling to be a party in 
bringing any new grief upon him, affected a 
horror of shedding a brother's blood, and 
proposed that they should rather cast him 
into a deep pit, near at hand, which had 
been dug to receive and preserve the rain- 
water, but which at that advanced season of 
the summer was exhausted. They agreed to 
this proposal, with the view of leaving him 
there to perish ; but it was Reuben's inten- 
tion to return in their absence and deliver 
him, to restore him safe to his father. 

Joseph had not been long in the cistern 
before his brothers observed the approach of 
a caravan of Arabian traders, who were on 
their way to Egypt, bearing to the markets 
of that already civilized and already luxu- 
rious country the spices and perfumes of the 
distant east. They knew that such parties 
were always glad to buy up slaves in their 
way, for the same market ; and therefore it 
occurred to Judah that it would be more 
profitable to sell him than to leave him to 
perish, while by thus disposing of him they 
might get rid of him effectually, without 
loading their consciences with his death. To 
this the others readily agreed. They there- 
fore drew Joseph out of the pit, and offered 
him to the Ishmaelites, who agreed to give 
twenty shekels weight of silver for him ; 



and, the bargain being completed, they de- 
parted with him to the land of Egypt. 

Reuben was not a party to this transactior , 
as he happened to be absent at the time ; 
and he was greatly afflicted, and, according 
to the oriental method of expressing pas- 
sionate grief, rent his clothes, when he re- 
turned to the cistern to deliver Joseph, and 
found him not there. He went and told his 
brothers ; but, whether they acquainted him 
with what had taken place, or left him in 
the persuasion that Joseph had been killed 
or stolen unknown to them, we are not in- 
formed. "We only know that they slew a 
kid and dipped in its blood the envied dress 
of which they had stripped their brother 
when they cast him into the pit; and they 
sent it to Jacob, saying they had found it in 
that state, leaving him to judge whether it 
was his son's robe or not, and to draw his 
own inferences. He knew the many-coloured 
coat ; and drew, as they desired, the infer- 
ence, that some evil beast had devoured his 
beloved son. " And Jacob rent his clothes, 
and put sackcloth upon his loins, and 
mourned for his son many days. And all 
his sons and all his daughters rose up to i 
comfort him ; but he refused to be com- 
forted ; and he said, ' For I will go down 
into the grave unto my son mourning.' " 

Before the sacred narrative follows J oseph 
into Egypt, it relates a remarkable incident 
in the history of Judah, which contributes 
to illustrate the ideas and manners of that 
remote age, and of the condition of society 
under which the patriarchs lived. 

At some undefined time previous to Jacob's 
removal to Mamre, Judah had contracted a 
friendship with a certain native of Adullam 
called Hirah ; and while on a visit to this 
person he fell in love with the daughter of a 
certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah, 
and married her, and by her had three sons, 
Er, Onan, and Shelah. When the first of 
these became marriageable — long after Jo- 
seph was sold to the Arabs, his father pro- i 
vided a wife for him in a woman of Canaan, 
named Tamar ; but he died prematurely, 
being cut off for some unnamed wickedness, 
| without leaving any children by her. Now 



chap, rv.] 



JACOB. 



79 



a custom of that country and state of life, 
— which was afterwards adopted into the law 
of Moses, and operates throughout the 
Jewish history, — required that what was 
deemed the greatest of all calamities, the 
death of a man without children to carry on 
his name and race, should be obviated by its 
being made incumbent on the next brother 
of the deceased to marry his widow, with the 
understanding that the first-born son of this 
union should to all intents and purposes be 
regarded as the son and heir of the man who 
died childless. This duty was often very 
unpalatable to those on whom it devolved. 
It was so to Onan, who, according to this 
custom was obliged to take Tamar in order 
" to raise up seed to his brother ;" and he, 
knowing that the issue would not be re- 
garded as his own, took a very criminal 
method of averting the designed result. For 
this he died, in some such sudden and 
! marked way as evinced that his death was a 
punishment from God. It then became the 
duty of the third son, Shelah, to become the 
husband of Tamar ; but Judah, who began 
to be afraid for his only surviving son, was 
glad that his extreme youth justified him in 
desiring T.jnar to withdraw to her father's 
house, and remain there as a widow, till 
Shelah should be of sufficient age. She 
waited accordingly ; but observing that her 
father-in-law made no sign of being willing 
to let his son discharge the obligation under 
which he lay, she thought of a plan whereby 
-she might not only remind him of his neg- 
lect, but might, perchance, realise that high 
and happy condition of a mother, after 
which we have seen all the patriarchal 
women longing with intense desire. 

Judah had lately buried his wife ; and 
after the days of mourning were over he 
went to Timnah with his old friend Hirah, 
to overlook the sheep-shearing which was in 
progress at that place. Tamar being aware 
of this presented herself to Judah's notice, 
on the way, in the guise of a harlot, and as 
such he was betrayed into an unlawful con- 
nection with her, whereby, in the end he 
became the father of two sons. He had 
promised her a kid, and as security for it 
left with her his staff, his bracelets, and his 



signet ring ; but when he sent the kid, to 
redeem his pledge, the harlot was nowhere 
to be found. But three months after he 
heard that Tamar was with child ; and, pro- 
bably, not displeased at being thus released 
from his fears about Shelah, at once said, 
" Bring her forth, and let her be burnt ! " 
She was brought forth : but when she pro- 
duced the staff, the bracelets, and the signet, 
with the declaration that the owner was the 
father of her unknown child, her stern judge 
was put to confusion : but the first and up- 
permost feeling in his mind seems to have 
been, that all this had justly befallen him for 
withholding from Tamar the husband she 
was entitled to claim. 

Besides the remarkable practice, and the 
ideas involved in it, on which this trans- 
action turns, the details bring the manners 
of the time very vividly before us, and evince 
the antiquity of usages which still exist in 
the east. The distinctive dress which har- 
lots wear, and which Tamar assumed for the 
occasion, the idea of leaving a pledge more 
valuable than the price, to assure the pay- 
ment of a price ; the use of such an ornament 
as a bracelet, and of such an instrument of 
authentication as a signet ; and, above all, 
the existence of a capital punishment, and 
that punishment burning, for criminal con- 
duct in a woman, with the authority as- 
sumed by Judah of directing the infliction 
of that punishment, are all facts of great 
interest to those who like to inquire into the 
origin or early history of usages or public 
notions. 

The patriarchal history may here be said 
to conclude, although the personal history 
of the patriarchs is not concluded. We are 
now about to direct our view to scenes very 
different to those which have hitherto en- 
gaged our chief attention. Therefore, 
although the history of Joseph might be in- 
cluded in the history of the patriarchs, — for 
he was a patriarch himself, and his father 
and his brethren still live, — we shall regard 
him as their harbinger in Egypt, and avail 
ourselves of the change to conclude this first 
book of our history. 



80 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. [BOOl 



BOOK II. 

THE HEBREWS IN EGYPT AND THE WILDERNESS. 



CHAPTER I. 
JOSEPH. 



When the Ishmaelites who had bought 
Joseph arrived in Egypt, they exposed -him 
for sale, and he was purchased for the do- 
mestic service of Potiphar, an officer of high 
rank in the court of the Egyptian king, and 
chief of the royal police. Instead of re- 
pining in his new situation, he applied him- 
self with great diligence and fidelity to the 
discharge of its duties. These qualities are 
too rare and valuable in a newly-purchased 
slave to escape the master's notice. J oseph's 
conduct engaged Potiphar s attention and 
won his esteem ; and when he moreover 
found that his slave was blest with singular 
prosperity in all his undertakings, he raised 
him to his confidence, and, in the end, he 
intrusted the management of all his con- 
cerns to him, making him steward, not only 
over his household, but over his lands. In 
this honourable station — which in the east 
is one of more authority and power (even 
when held by a slave) than anything in our 
own state of society would suggest — the son 
of Jacob might have been tolerably happy ; 
and doubtless was so, save when his mind 
wandered to his father and his father's 
tents. 

He had been ten years in the service of 
Potiphar, and had reached the fine age of 
twenty-seven years, when it happened that 
his extreme comeliness attracted the atten- 
tion of his master's wife. Finding him in- 
sensible to her slighter seductions and over- 
tures, she at last came to declare to him 
plainly her criminal desires ; and this she 
did one day, when all the family were from 
home, in so very passionate a manner, that 



Joseph, not deeming it safe to stay and 
plead, as he had been wont to do, his obliga- 
tions to his master, and his duty to his God, 
abruptly withdrew, leaving in her hand his 
outer garment*, of which she had laid hold. 

As might be expected, the love of Poti- i 
phar's wife was turned to bitter hatred by 
this affront, and she resolved to be the ruin 
of the man by whom her advances had been 
repelled. The means by which this might j 
be effected would readily occur to the sharp 




[Egyptian Lady. J 

* This was a kind of narrow mantle or skirt, covering 
the hack and reaching to about the middle of the leg. In 
the sculptures and paintings of ancient Egypt it is almost 
always seen as worn by overseers and stewards, and appears 
to have been a part of their distinguishing dress. From 
the manner in which the lower part of it only is brought 
into view, it is manifest that it was only used as the outer 
covering for the back. 



CHAP. L] 



JOSEPH. 



81 



I invention of a resentful woman. She raised 
a terrible outcry ; and when those who were 
within hearing hastened to the spot, she de- 
clared that Joseph had made an attempt 
upon her virtue, but when he heard her cries 

i he fled, leaving behind him his mantle. The 

! promotion of a foreign slave, descended from 
a class of men hateful to the Egyptians, to 
the chief authority in the large household 
of Potiphar, was calculated to raise the envy 
and jealousy of other members of that house- 

| hold. This the woman knew, and, artfully 
appealing to feelings so well calculated to 
make their ears greedy for a tale to his dis- 
advantage, she said, "See, he [Potiphar] 
hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock 
us." 

'When the good man himself came home, 
she related to him the story of the guilty 
impudence of the " Hebrew servant," with 
such passionate earnestness of indignation, 
that no doubt of its truth could be suggested 
to his mind, especially as the evidence of the 
cloak lay before his eyes. In most cases an 
oriental master would, under such circum- 
stances, put his slave instantly to death; 
and, as Potiphar s resentment must have 
been all the greater for the esteem in which 
he had held Joseph, and the entire con- 
fidence he had reposed in him, we agree not 
with those who think that such feelings 
now operated in preventing him from slay- 
ing the slave he supposed so unfaithful, but 
are rather disposed to conclude that in a 
country which was so subject to law, and 
whose government was so completely organ- 
ised as that of Egypt, no master, not even 
of Potiphar's rank in the state, was allowed 
to inflict death even on a slave. The measure 
he took was to send Joseph to the prison in 
which the king's prisoners were kept, and 
which was probably under his own direction 
as chief of the royal police. Here his " feet 
they hurt with fetters : he was laid in 
iron."* 

But the horrors of this imprisonment were 
soon mitigated through the kindness of the 
keeper, who was won by his engaging dis- 

* Psalm cv. 18. We should scarcely have imagined that 
fetters of iron were thus early in use, but for this express 
statement. 



position and his abilities to release him from 
his chains and commit all the other prisoners 
to his charge. As imprisonment has rarely 
been used among the ancient or modern 
nations of the east as a punishment after 
trial or judgment, but only to detain men in 
safe keeping until they have been tried, or 
until it has been determined what to do 
with them — it is rather difficult to account 
for Joseph's long imprisonment of three 
years, but by supposing it the result of his 
master's indecision, encouraged by the oppor- 
tunity, which his official post afforded him, 
of keeping his slave imprisoned without 
question or interference from other parties. 
We have no doubt that, when Potiphar 
sent Joseph to prison, he intended to take 
further measures, but many circumstances 
may be supposed which were calculated to 
prevent the fulfilment of this intention. We 
incline to imagine that he soon found cause 
to suspect the truth of his wife's story ; and 
it is possible that Joseph had given a true 
account of the matter, which, on further 
reflection, his master may have been rather 
disposed to believe. But then, while, on the 
one hand, he could not inflict a further and 
final punishment, or bring him to trial — if 
trial was necessary to a further punishment ; 
on the other, a proper regard to his own 
peace and honour would prevent him from 
restoring Joseph to his former place in his 
household. Joseph was his slave, and he 
could not liberate him without also relin- 
quishing his property in him, to which, or to 
the other alternative of selling him, he may 
have seen objections which we do not see, 
unless in the desire of keeping close the 
story of his wife's conduct. He probably 
therefore satisfied himself with acquiescing 
in the favourable treatment which Joseph 
received in the prison from the keeper. It 
must not be forgotten that this officer was 
Potiphar's own subordinate, and that he was 
himself the superior functionary who was 
responsible to the king for the prisoners ; 
and it follows from this that, when it was 
found that Joseph's talents for business 
might be turned to account in the manage- 
ment of the prison, he was still, in fact, 
serving histoid master, and indeed rendering 



'62 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



services of such value as might alone suffice 
to account for his not being sold or manu- 
mitted. 

Joseph had been about a year in the 
prison when Potiphar received into his cus- 
tody two of his brother officers of Pharaoh's 
court, the chief butler and the chief cook, 
who had given the king some cause of deep 
offence ; and he, willing to show them all 
the attention which his duty allowed, recom- 
mended them to the especial care of Joseph. 

Anciently, as now, throughout the east, 
the utmost attention was paid to dreams ; 
and the interpretation of them became an 
art, in which the ingenuity of many intel- 
ligent minds found much mistaken exercise 
in the attempt to assign a vital meaning to 
the fantasies of dreamy sleep. Hence every 
one. sought an interpretation of whatever 
dream made sufficient impression to be remem- 
bered ; and he became most uneasy for whose 
dream no interpreter could be found. We 
shall see many instances of this as we proceed. 

One morning Joseph observed that the 
countenances of the two great officers were 
more downcast than usual, and on asking 
the reason they told him that it was because 
they could procure no interpretation of the 
singular dreams with which their sleep had 
been visited. He then desired to hear their 
dreams ; and, knowing their superstitious 
notions, took the opportunity of hinting 
that the interpretation of dreams, when 
they were of any importance, did not depend 
on rules of art, but, to be true, must be sug- 
gested by God, who thus sometimes saw fit 
to convey warning and admonition. The 
dreams themselves, being pictures of actual 
circumstances, are, so far, illustrative of the 
usages of the Egyptian court. The butler's 
dream shows how a grape- sherbet (not 
" wine ") was made for the royal drink. He 
beheld a three-branched vine, full of ripe 
clusters, which he seized, and pressed their 
juice into Pharaoh's cup, which he then de- 
livered into the king's hand. Joseph told 
him that this dream signified that in three 
days Pharaoh would come to a decision on 
his case, and would restore him to his former 
office. " But think on me," continued 
Joseph, "when it shall be well with thee, 



and show kindness, I pray thee, unto me ; 
and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and 
bring me out of this house : for, indeed, I 
was stolen away from the land of the 
Hebrews ; and here also have I done nothing 
that they should put me into the dungeon." 

The chief cook was encouraged by this 
interpretation to tell his dream also. He 
had seemed to bear on his head three trays ; 




[Egyptian with a Tray of Meats on his head *.] 

the uppermost contained all kinds of baked 
meats for the king's table. But, as he passed 
across the court of the king's palace, the 
birds of air came and stole them from the 
basket. This dream was interpreted by 
Joseph to signify that in three days the king 
would decide upon his case also ; but, in- 
stead of restoring him to his post, would 
cause him to be hanged on a tree, where the 
birds of the air should come and devour his 
carcase. 

All happened as Joseph had been enabled 
to foretell. On the third day from that the 
king's birth-day occurred ; and we are in- 
structed that even at this early date birth- 
days were celebrated with rejoicings. Pha- 
raoh made a feast for his great officers ; and 
it being, seemingly, customary for him to 
distinguish the occasion by acts of grace 
and favour where they could be worthily 
bestowed, he now pronounced his decision 
respecting the two great officers then in 

* It will be seen that in this cut the man is in the act of 
removing the tray from his head, and has knelt down for 
the purpose. 



JOSEPH. 



83 



prison. The chief butler he pardoned, and 
restored to his place, but, having found no 
ground for clemency in the case of the head 
cook) he commanded him to be hanged. To 
this account the sacred historian adds the 
significant announcement — " Yet did not the 
chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat 
him." 

After this two years passed away, and 
Joseph still remained in prison. 

At the expiration of that time the king 
of Egypt himself had two remarkable dreams 
by which he was greatly troubled. It is still 
usual for the cattle in the hot valley of the 
Nile, when they are driven to the water, to 
enter the stream and stand there as long as 
they are allowed, solacing themselves in the 
cool wave. Pharaoh thought that he was 
standing on the bank of the river, when he 
beheld seven beautiful fat heifers come up 
out of the water, and feed in a meadow. 
After a while there came up at the same 
spot seven of the leanest and most ill-con- 
ditioned heifers that the king had ever seen, 
and stood beside the others on the river's 
brink ; and, in the end, the seven fat and 
beautiful heifers were devoured by them. 
The king awoke : and when he again fell 
.asleep dreamed that he saw spring up, on 
one stalk, seven go>d anl plump ears of 



corn ; and after that sprang up seven other 
ears of corn, thin, and blighted by the east 
wind ; and by these the first were devoured. 
As these dreams appeared to have a certain 
significance and analogy not common in 
dreams, the king was, in the morning, more 
than even usually anxious to have them in- 
terpreted ; but none of the interpreters and 
diviners — none of the " wise men," who cus- 
tomarily gave the interpretation of his 
dreams — were able to assign any satisfactory 
meaning to them ; and their failure brought 
to the mind of the chief butler the dreams 
of himself and the chief cook in the prison- 
house, with the exact accomplishment of 
the interpretation which Joseph had given. 
Of this he gave the king a brief but clear 
account : and Pharaoh, happy in the prospect 
of relief from the unusual trouble of an un- 
interpreted dream, sent an order to the chief 
of the royal police to release Joseph, and 
send him to the palace. When this order 
arrived, Joseph was just allowed time to 
shave his head and beard, and change his 
raiment, and was then hurried off to the 
royal palace, and presented to the king. The 
sovereign said to him, " I have dreamed a 
dream, and there is none that can interpret 
it : and I have heard say of thee, that when 
thou hearest a dream thou canst interpret 




TEgyptian King on his Throne.] 



G 2 



84 

it." But the faithful Joseph, not willing to 
encourage even a kingly delusion, answered, 
" It is not in me : God shall give to Pharaoh 
an answer of peace." Then the king, with- 
out further parley, related his dreams ; and 
Joseph told him that they had both the 
same signification, which was, that seven 
years of exuberant plenty were coming, and 
that they would be followed by seven years 
of the severest scarcity ever known — so 
severe that the land would be consumed, 
and the preceding years of plenty be utterly 
forgotten. This principle of the dreams 
being explained, the connection of both of 
them with the river obviously suggested to 
all who heard the dreams and their inter- 
pretation, that the years of plenty would 
result from an unsually favourable succession 
of those inundations by which the valley of 
the Nile is fertilized ; and that the ensuing 
years of scarcity would be caused by the 
failure of its waters to rise to the fertilizing- 
limit. 

Joseph, perceiving at once how the exu- 
berant supplies of the seven fertile years 
might be so husbanded as to meet the de- 
ficiencies of the seven years of scarcity which 
were to follow, proceeded to state his views 
in this matter to the king, and advised that 
some discerning and wise men should be in- 
vested with full powers to give effect to the 
measures which he had suggested. The 
king, struck not less by the interpretation 
of his dreams than by the wisdom of the 
plans by which Joseph proposed to avert the 
evils which that interpretation threatened, 
asked the great persons then present, " Can 
we find such a one as this is, a man in whom 
the spirit of God is ?"* And on their assent, 
he addressed Joseph, saying, " Forasmuch as 
God hath shewed thee all this, there is none 
so discreet and wise as thou art : thou shalt 
be over my house ; and according unto thy 
word shall all my people be ruled : only in 
the throne will I be greater than thou." 
And then, after a pause, he proceeded more 
formally to invest him with this high office. 

* We wish this to be marked as an intimation that the 
kings of Egypt were in the habit of asking, at least 
formally, the consent of their council to the course they 

proposed. 



[book II. 

He drew the signet-ring from his finger, and 
placed it upon the finger of Joseph, convey- 
ing to him, by that act, the highest powers 
he could delegate, saying, as he did it, " See, 
I have set thee over all the land of Egypt." 
He then ordered him to be arrayed in ves- 
tures of fine muslin — such as only royal and 
high persons wore ; after which he placed, 
with his own hands, a chain of gold about 
his neck. And, it being usual to promulgate 
with high pomp and ceremony such acts of 
royal favour, and make known the authority 
which had been conferred, the king com- 
manded that Joseph, thus nobly arrayed, 
should be conducted in grand procession 
through the city, in the second of the royal 
chariots ; and that men should go before 
him to cry, " Bow the knee." 

There is much in all this which is cal- 
culated to instruct us in the extreme anti- 
quity of customs which still exist, and of 
ideas which still prevail in the east. Here 
we see not only the signet-ring, but its em- 
ployment as the sign and symbol of autho- 
rity, delegated by him to whom it belonged 
and for whom it was made. In those days, 
when not the manual signature, but the 
impression of the signet-ring, authenticated 
every royal act and command, there was 
nothing, unless a due regard to circum- 
stances, to prevent the holder of the royal 
signet from doing whatever he pleased in the 
king's name. Then the dress not only gives 
the seal of high antiquity to the oriental 
ideas concerning dresses of honour, but even 
to that bestowing an office by such a dress, 
which is not quite abandoned in Europe, and 
the former prevalence of which is indicated 
by our very words, "inwsf" and "inre£- 
iture." The chain or collar of gold is still 
used, almost everywhere, in courts, as a 
badge of honour ; and, in the higher cases 
of its use as such, it is even now fastened 
about the neck by the sovereign hand. Of 
the procession of honour, analogous examples 
remain among ourselves — although the pub- 
lic taste is becoming too refined to receive 
from their imposing circumstances those im- 
pressions which, in their institution, they 
were intended to convey. All these actual 
circumstances, and others which they imply, 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



I.] 



JOSEPH. 



8.1 



serve to evince how little this most ancient 
court was wanting in those conditions of 
splendour and ceremony with which, in other 
countries and later ages, the sovereign state 




[Signet-Rings of Ancient Egypt.*] 

has been surrounded. The whole trans- 
action may be instruct in gly compared with 
the account which the Scripture gives t of 
the promotion of Mordecai by the Persian 
king. 

When Joseph returned, and again stood 
before the king, Pharaoh more strongly still 
expressed his own view of the powers he 
had conveyed to him. " I am Pharaoh," 
said he, reserving his royal authority ; " and 

* This cut represents different seal rings of ancient 
Egypt, and are very curious, not only as such, but for the 
specimens of ancient seal -engTaving which they offer. It 
will be observed that in some of the specimens the stone is 
a cube engraved on each of its four sides, and made to re- 
volve in the ring, so that any of the inscriptions might be 
used at the option of the possessor. The hand in the 
engraving is copied from a mummy-case in the British 
Museum, and is that of a female. It serves to show the 
manner in which finger-rings were worn, and the awkward 
profusion in which they were exhibited by the women of 
ancient Egypt. The bracelet also illustrates the principal 
form of an ornament so often mentioned in the Scriptures. 

t Esther vi. 4—11. 



without thee shall no man lift up his hand 
or foot in all the land of Egypt." 

It has never been unusual in oriental 
countries for foreign slaves to rise to the 
highest offices in the state ; and there have 
been countries in which none but such 
persons could rise to them. But, from the 
view of Egyptian society which we have 
been enabled to realise, we are led to suspect 
that such promotion of a foreigner and a 
slave could at no time be very usual in 
ancient Egypt, where all the avenues to 
power and influence in the state were 
zealously guarded by the priesthood, which 
would little brook the intrusion of any one 
not of their order — much less a foreigner — 
into the high office which had been bestowed 
on Joseph. The system may have been less 
rigid at this time than it afterwards became ; 
but that it operated to some extent we see 
in the measures which the king — although 
he already had the consent of his council — 
deemed it prudent to take, to confirm J oseph 
in his high place. That his foreign origin 
might not be constantly presented to the 
mind of the Egyptians, by his strange, and, 
to them, barbarous name of " Joseph," the 
king bestowed upon him the high-sounding 
and significant Egyptian one of " Zaphnath- 
paaneah."t And that he might establish 
him in his position, by securing him the 
countenance and support of the priestly 
order — which was indispensably necessary 
to him — the king got him married to 
Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, the 
chief priest of On, better known by its later 
Greek name of Heliopolis — the city of the 
sun. This city was in all ages a sort of 
ecclesiastical metropolis of Lower Egypt— 
the prime seat of the sacred mysteries and 
higher science of the country ; and was, as 
such, the fountain from which the Greek 
philosophers and historians were allowed to 
draw the scanty information which they 
have transmitted to us. For these reasons, 
as well as because the sun, which was there 
worshipped, was, as in other idolatrous 
systems, one of the first, if not the chief, of 
the gods — and in Egypt the rank of the 
priests was proportioned to that of the gods 

_t The revealer of secrets. 



86 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[bcok II. 



to whom they ministered— there can be no 
question that the priest of On, into whose 
family J oseph married, was one of the most 
eminent and influential of his illustrious 
order. The marriage was, therefore, doubt- 
less a great temporal advantage to Joseph, 
whatever may be said of it in other re- 
spects*. By this marriage Joseph had two 
sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, before the 
years of famine came. 

Soon after his elevation, Joseph made a 
progress throughout the land, in order to 
acquaint himself thoroughly with the 
materials with which he had to work, and 
to determine the particular arrangements 
which might be necessary to give effect to 
the measures which he contemplated. These 
measures do not appear to us to have been 
well understood or appreciated, although 
considerable attention has certainly been 
given to them; and they, indeed, deserve 
the best attention, whether we look upon 
them as forming, together, one grand opera- 
tion, the several acts of which were made, 
with statesmanlike skill, to bear on one 
another in working out the important result 
which his view embraced; or whether, 
without attributing to him so much political 
foresight as to have seen all the results from 
the beginning, we confine our attention to 
the consummate ability with which his 
course was taken under the circumstances 
which necessarily arose. There has been 
much objection, not less to the principles 
than to the details of his procedure — 
arising, we are persuaded, from the in- 
veterate habit of measuring all things by 
our own standard, without adequate reference 
(if any) to, or allowance for, the very dif- 
fering ideas which grew up, and seemed 
reasonable, under other systems of govern- 

* We know too little of the affair to feel authorized to 
pass a very decisive judgment upon it. We shall, there- 
fore, only observe that, in the strong remarks which some 
divines have made on the subject, it appears to have been 
entirely overlooked that Judah, the only other of Jacob's 
sons of whose marriage we know anything, married a 
woman of Canaan, and there is every reason to conclude 
that all his brothers did the like. It does not appear that 
any of them went to Padan-Aram for wives ; and how far 
it may have been preferable for them to haye married 
among the descendants of Ishmael, Midian, and Edom is 
another question. 



ment, and under other public notions than 
those by which our own ideas are formed 
and guided. We are far from saying that 
the proceedings of Joseph are not to be 
explained or justified by the severe rule of 
estimate which is formed by the application 
of our own ideas of government to measures 
of oriental policy; but we are not willing 
that Joseph's character as a statesman 
should suffer in consequence of the appli- 
cation of such a standard to a crude and 
erroneous view of his position, and of the 
circumstances under which he proceeded. 
In our own view, the character of Joseph 
stands so high, and he appears before us 
with hands so clear from any taint of 
political iniquity, that we are willing his 
conduct should be tried by the severest rule 
which can be found, as long as the facts of 
his procedure are thoroughly understood. 
Brought up at first under the tents of his 
father, in a spirit of order and combination ; 
and then well exercised in affairs of detail, 
and in the management of men, while in 
charge first of a noble household, and then 
of a prison, — the providence of God had 
furnished Joseph with more than ordinary 
training for the high place to which he was 
now called. Our own task is to detail his 
proceedings in that place, according to the 
view which we have taken, and to offer such 
remarks upon them as may seem necessary ; 
and if the result contributes in the slightest 
degree to the vindication of one whose public 
character we highly value, our satisfaction 
will be very great. 

In his tour of survey, Joseph directed the 
construction of immense granaries in the 
principal cities, and established proper 
officers, who were charged with the duty of 
buying up one-fifth part of all the corn 
produced during the seven years of plenty, 
within the surrounding district, the borders 
of which met those of other districts, for 
which other cities with public granaries 
were the centres of collection. The whole 
land was thus, for the purpose of the col- 
lection, divided into districts, probably of 
nearly equal extent. The corn thus col- 
lected was to be stored aAvay in the granaries 
for use during the years of famine. All 



CHAP. I.] 



JOSEPH. 



87 



this was done. And let it be observed that, 
in originally recommending this plan to 
-Pharaoh, Joseph did not, even to him, 
propose the aggrandisement of the royal 
authority as any motive for, or probable 
effect of, his operations, but only that the 
people of the land might not "perish 
through famine." 

Those years of famine came at the 
appointed time. It appears that the dearth 
was very general, and not by any means 
confined to the valley of the Nile. Syria, 
at least, was not visited by the rains, the 
want of which, in their seasoD, kept back 
for seven years the fertilizing inundations 
of that river. When the pressure of the 
famine began to be felt severely by the 
people — or, in the strong language of the 
sacred historian — " When all the land of 
Egypt was famished, the people cried to 
Pharaoh for bread." The king referred 
them to Joseph ; who now, understanding 
that the proper time was arrived, opened 
his well-filled granaries, and sold not only 
to the Egyptians, but, with some restrictions, 
to foreigners, such conn as they required. 
When their money was all spent, they again 
came to. Joseph, and with that determined 
manner which the knowledge that there was 
corn to be had was calculated to give, said, 
" Give us bread : for why should we die in 
thy presence ? for the money faileth. " The 
vizier, knowing that the subsistence of their 
cattle must, under these circumstances, be a 
matter of great difficulty to them, offered to 
give them corn in exchange for their cattle. 
This offer was cheerfully accepted; and 
Joseph, by bringing the flocks and herds 
together, and subjecting them to a general 
system of management and subsistence, was 
doubtless enabled to preserve them at a less 
expense to his stores than would otherwise 
have been practicable. It is on this occasion 
I that we first read of horses, which are named 
among the cattle which the Egyptians 
exchanged for corn. 

By this means the people secured sub- 
sistence for another year; but in the year 
following they had no cattle left to offer for 
corn. They therefore came to Joseph, and 
offered — freely offered, be it remembered, — 



to transfer their lands to the king, and to 
place their persons at his disposal, provided 
they were supplied with food while the 
famine lasted, and with seed to sow the 
land, when it again became cultivable. 
Their stipulation for seed to sow the land, 
in the same breath that they offered to sell 
their lands and services to the king, seems 
to us to give their proposition a very differ- 
ent appearance to that in which it is usually 
represented. Does it not clearly intimate 
that they expected still to remain in occu- 
pation of the land? For what cause had 
they to be anxious about seed, if they had 
no land on which to sow it ? — -or what cause, 
if they expected no longer to derive benefit 
from the labour they bestowed upon it? 
One who views himself as one "sold" — a 
slave or a serf, makes no anxious stipulation 
for seed to cultivate his master's fields ; for 
he knows well that his master will look to 
that, and will take care that his lands shall 
be cultivated. When they therefore said, 
" Buy us and our land," it must be evident 
that they are to be understood in some such 
sense as, that, in consideration of their families 
being maintained during the famine, they 
would relinquish their freehold right in 
their lands, but regard the king as supreme 
proprietor of the soil, and cultivate it as his 
hereditary tenants or farmers, paying him, 
in acknowledgment of his claim, such a pro- 
portion of the produce for rent as the justice 
of Joseph might determine. And if their 
proposition is to be understood in some such 
way as this, then the same sense must be 
assigned to Joseph's acceptance of it, in the 
name of the king, and also to the terms of 
his answer, echoing their own words, when 
he said, " Behold, I have bought you, this 
day, and your land, for Pharaoh." His cha- 
racter has paid too dearly for these words : 
although the sense in which he really used 
them, and in which he understood them to 
be used by the applicants, is, quite con- 
formably to the view we have here taken, 
evinced by the agreement which he actually 
made. This was, that they were to remain 
in occupation of the lands of which Pharaoh 
had become the sovereign proprietor; and 
that they were pay to him, as yearly rent, 



88 

one-fifth part of the produce, in lieu of all 
other charges and imposts to which it may 
have been subject. Thus Pharaoh became 
the sovereign proprietor of the soil in Egypt, 
and thus the former proprietors became his 
tenants — "servants," the text indeed says, 
for the word " tenant" does not occur in all 
the Bible ; and those whom, from the par- 
ticulars offered, we recognise as tenants, are 
called "servants" there. That this is the 
case in the present instance — and that the 
people became tenants, paying a produce 
rent, and not serfs or slaves, — is so self- 
evident from the terms of the compact, that 
no agreement or explanation seems needful to 
make it clearer. And we are to remember, 
that a tenant in the east — and more espe- 
cially in Egypt — has, even in his worst 
estate, that of the fellah, enjoyed almost a 
freehold right in his land, from which he 
could not be removed by the proprietor, and 
which he might transmit to his heirs, and 
might even alienate it by gift or sale to a 
stranger; although, in the last case, he had 
to obtain the permission of the proprietor 
and to pay him a fine. The proprietor could 
only resume the occupation of the land or 
introduce a new tenant when the last died 
without heirs*. 

If we could be well aware of the position 
in which those Egyptians stood before 
Joseph's regulation took effect, we should 
very probably find more and stronger 
reasons for exonerating the minister of 
Pharaoh from the charges which have been 
brought against this part of his conduct. 
The sovereign in almost every country of 
the east has, from the most remote times, 
been regarded as the paramount proprietor 
of the soil. The tendency of oriental ideas 
is decidedly to regard him as such : and, 
even under the Jewish theocracy, God, as the 
King of the Hebrew people, was mindful to 
instruct the Israelites that the land was hist, 

* Respecting the land-tenure in Egypt, see Reynier, 
* De l'Economie Publique et Rurale des Egyptiens,' p. 96, 
&c. ; Heeren, * Policy and Commerce of Ancient Nations,' 
sect. iii. c. 2 ; Silvador, ' Histoire des Institutions de Moise,' 
iii. 343. 

t " The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is 
mine : for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." — Lev. 
xxv. 23. 



[book II. 

which they held of him as hereditary 
tenants, much in the same way as that in 
which, under the regulation of Joseph, the 
Egyptians held their lands of Pharaoh ; the 
offerings and tithes which they gave for the 
support of His worship being, in one point 
of view, regarded as a produce-rent paid to 
him for the land. It is likely, therefore, 
that the subject had before this been mooted 
among the Egyptians, and that they only 
took this occasion of expressing their acqui- 
escence in a matter which had in former 
times been talked of and considered. Their 
doing so now had the advantage of giving 
them the appearance of a claim for sub- 
sistence out of the public granaries during 
the famine : while the substitution of a 
settled produce-rent, in place of the various 
and fluctuating, and therefore harassing, 
contributions which they had made to the 
support of the government, and for the con- 
duct of wars and public works, may have 
seemed to them a very adequate compensa- 
tion for the merely nominal relinquishment 
of their independence. There can be no 
doubt that the immediate effect of this 
measure was to substitute a produce-rent of 
one-fifth in the place of all other exactions ; 
and that Joseph's acquiescence in their plan 
was acceptable to them, and the terms con- 
sidered favourable, may be seen from the 
gratitude with which it was received : — 
" Thou hast saved our lives," said they ; " let 
us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we 
will be Pharaoh's servants." 

One who writes on these matters is much 
tempted to digress into the history of the 
land tenures of Egypt, as made known to 
us by Herodotus and Diodorus. But our 
limits do not render it convenient, nor is it 
necessary for our purposes, to take notice of 
more than the book of Genesis specifies. It 
may suffice to mention, that the facts of 
these later historians may be easily shown 
to be in unison with those which our earlier 
account supplies, while the essential spirit 
is perfectly the same. It appears, then, that 
the history of these transactions exhibits 
the sacerdotal aristocracy as a distinct body 
of landed proprietors from those with whom 
Joseph had to deal. Now these proprietors 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. I.] 

did certainly at a later day, and, from cir- 
cumstances, we judge it to be sufficiently 
certain that they did before, farm out their 
estates to cultivators, or hereditary tenants, 
who paid them a produce-rent, and were 
exempt from any charges to the support of 
the state. This being the case, the people 
of Egypt, when they offered to give up their 
property in chief of their lands to the 
crown, and to become its tenants, had 
already before their eyes an example of the 
operation of that system under which they 
were willing to be placed ; and, considering 
the splendour of the Egyptian court, and 
the cost of its establishments and under- 
takings, and the taxation upon the inde- 
pendent landowners which was necessary to 
support them, we may have reason to more 
than suspect that they had little cause to 
feel their condition superior to that of the 
tenants of the hierarchy, with their single 
payment of a certain and moderate rent, 
which rose or fell with the abundance or 
scarcity of the season. Upon the whole, 
therefore, while they no doubt knew that 
their proposition would be acceptable to the 
king, we see ground to conclude that the 
operation would on their part be regarded 
under any circumstances without repug- 
nance. 

Among the settled nations of the east, it 
has always been the disposition to identify 
the state with the king, and for every one to 
consider that in serving the king he serves 
the state ; and therefore any regard for the 
liberties of the people is, perhaps, a thing 
impossible to an oriental. We have no 
wish to attribute it to Joseph; it being 
quite sufficient to satisfy us, if the state- 
ments which we have offered tend to acquit 
him of that political injustice which has 
been laid to his charge. We think he acted 
fairly; — not unmindful of the king's in- 
terests, on the one hand, nor, on the other, 
desiring to take an undue advantage of the 
people's wants. 

Only two items of the charge against 
Joseph remain to be noticed. When this 
bargain had been completed, we are told 
that, "As for the people, Joseph removed 
them to cities from one end of the borders 



89 

of Egypt even to the other end thereof." 
Whence it has been most strangely imagined 
that he removed them from their original 
seats to distant towns; whereas, it plainly 
enough means no more than that, having 
now undertaken to feed the people from his 
granaries, he desired them to remove from 
the open country in every district, where all 
agricultural labour was at a stand, to the 
cities of these several districts in which the 
granaries were situated, for the convenience 
of distributing the corn to them. This was 
done throughout all the country. 

The other charge is, that, while he thus 
dealt with the people, he took care to court 
the favour of the priestly aristocracy, with 
which he was himself connected by mar- 
riage, by not interfering with their posses- 
sions, but supplying them freely from the 
public stores with such corn as they required. 
The answer to this is, that the facts are true, 
but the inferences wrong. The priests were 
from time immemorial entitled to receive an 
allowance of provisions from the government, 
the rents of their lands being applied to the 
support of the temples and the public wor- 
ship ; and certainly it would not have been 
just to deprive them of their subsistence 
when their own lands lay unproductive. 

Besides, the priestly nobles filled all the 
high offices of state, were constantly about 
the king as his counsellors and companions 
— the king himself being high-priest by 
virtue of his office: and, as Joseph must 
have been assured, the manifestation of any 
disposition to interfere with their privileges 
would most certainly be abortive, and would 
probably be' the signal for his downfall; 
while the kind and beneficent relations 
which subsisted between the priests and the 
people, who regarded their lands as a pro- 
perty devoted to sacred uses, would probably 
have rendered such an interference as little 
popular with the mass of the Egyptian 
community as with the aristocracy. Under 
such circumstances, we see nothing so very 
blameable in this part of Joseph's conduct. 

We have given more space to this matter 
than the mere wish to justify Pharaoh's 
vizier would have obtained. But it happens 
that this justification involves the statement 



JOSEPH. 



90 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



of illustrative facts and principles which 
will hereafter, and in various forms, come 
frequently before us, and which will be 
much the better recognised and understood 
from the statement which has now been 
given. 

The desire to preserve the connection of 
the narrative has led us on to the end of 
the years of famine. But now, in resuming 
the history of Jacob, and in connecting it 
with that of his dear and well-remembered 
son, we must go back to the second year of 
the scarcity. 

The famine began to be felt very severely 
in the land of Canaan, when the news came 
that strangers were allowed to buy corn in 
Egypt. Jacob heard it, and determined to 
send his sons to bring a large quantity. He 
detained with him only his youngest son 
Benjamin, the only son of his beloved 
Rachel now remaining to him, and who had 
succeeded to the place in his father's 
tenderest affections which his full-brother 
Joseph had once occupied. Benjamin was 
at this time twenty-six years of age. 
Jacob's sorrowful remembrance of Joseph's 
loss made him reluctant to trust his Ben- 
jamin from home, especially on such a 
journey; "Lest," said he, " peradventure, 
some mischief befal him." 

Among the foreigners who came to buy 
corn in Egypt were the ten sons of Jacob. 
It seems that, although the Egyptians 
themselves could purchase their corn of the 
officers whom Joseph had appointed for the 
purposes of the distribution, no strangers 
could obtain corn until they had received 
the special permission of Joseph. The sons 
of Jacob therefore presented themselves at 
his audience ; and now, fulfilling at once the 
dreams which in their anger they had vainly 
endeavoured to frustrate, they bowed them- 
selves before him as " the governor over the 
land." Twenty-two years had passed since 
they sold him for a slave. He was then a 
mere lad of seventeen, and now had reached 
the staid age of thirty-nine ; a great change 
had therefore taken place in his personal 
appearance, and they could scarcely have 
known him under any ciicumstances, much 
less now, when he appeared before them as 



a great Egyptian lord, surrounded by every 
circumstance of honour and distinction, and 
speaking to them through an interpreter. 
Little could they think that this was he 
whom they must have supposed, if alive, to 
be the slave of some Egyptian master, whose 
cattle he fed, or to the humblest of whose 
household wants he ministered. But they 
were recognised by Joseph ; and seeing only 
ten of them, all of whom he knew, and that 
the one wanting was he whom, from his 
youth, he would have guessed to be the son 
of his mother, he appears to have appre- 
hended that they had sacrificed him also to 
their jealousy of their father's only remaining 
favourite. He therefore acted so as to learn 
from them the prosperity of his father's 
house, and also the fate of his brother, with- 
out making himself known to them. He 
put on a harsh manner, and " spake roughly 
unto them," charging them with being 
" spies," come to see the " nakedness of the 
land." 

To conceive the full force of this charge, 
and to appreciate the terror and distraction 
it was calculated to produce, it is necessary 
to recall the attention of the reader to the 
operation of the circumstances which have 
been related in a preceding page * — the 
reign of the shepherd-race in Egypt, their 
expulsion, and their settlement in Palestine 
under the name of the Philistines. The 
period of their intrusion was still remem- 
bered keenly by the Egyptians ; and, on 
i heir account, every tent-dwelling shepherd 
had become such an abomination in their 
sight that they would not even eat with him. 
For this aversion the oppressions to which 
they had been subject under this foreign and 
barbarous rule would alone sufficiently 
account ; but, besides this, the valley of the 
Nile was bordered by pastoral tribes, who 
were not only objects of dislike to the 
Egyptians, on account of the vast difference 
in their modes of life, but on account of 
their continual aggressions upon the in- 
habitants of the more exposed rural districts. 
Always on the watch for prey and for oppor- 
tunities of spoliation — we cannot doubt that 
the Egyptians would regard the past-oral 

* Page 31. 



1 CHAP. I.] 

tribes around them with that mixed dislike 
and^ apprehension of which they are to this 
day the objects in every settled country to 
which they are neighbours. Thus, then, 
while the Egyptians had the general cause 
I of dislike towards the pastoral nomades, they 
had also the particular cause of having been 
i recently under the iron yoke of a shepherd- 
race; and, while their experience was cal- 
culated to make them suspicious of shepherds 
generally, they had particular cause to be 
apprehensive of those shepherds who, after 
their expulsion from Egypt — with great cost 
and difficulty — had withdrawn into Palestine, 
where they had been gathering strength, 
and had perhaps already made some aggres- 
sive forays into the most exposed border- 
! district of Egypt, to which they were still 
| the nearest neighbours. Now Jacob's sons 
I were not only nomade shepherds, but they 
came from Palestine — from the very borders 
of that territory which the old Philistine 
enemies of Egypt at this time occupied. 
Hence that they were spies, come to seek 
I openings for future aggression, was a most 
I obvious suspicion for an Egyptian to enter- 
I tain ; and the men's hearts must have 
quaked within them when they heard the 
charge, and perceived the force with which 
it bore upon them. They protested their 
innocence ; and, in their anxiety to repel the 
charge, they entered into a particular detail 
of the circumstances of their family : in 
which they afforded him the information he 
desired — namely, that his father was alive 
and well, and that his brother Benjamin was 
at home with him. Anxious to see his 
brother, and to assure himself that their 
statement was true, Joseph made his ap- 
pearance the test of their sincerity : — 
" Hereby ye shall be proved : By the life of 
Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence except 
your youngest brother come hither. Send one 
of you, and let him fetch your brother ; and ye 
shall be kept in prison, that your words may 
be proved, whether there be any truth in 
you : or else, by the life of Pharaoh, surely 
ye are spies." These repeated asseverations, 
as observed by Dr. Hales *, indicated strong 

* In this and the following paragraph his condensed 
account of the circumstances has been mainly adopted. 



91 

emotions of resentment at the remembrance 
of their cruelty ; and his conduct in the end 
proved it, for he " put them all together into 
ward three days." He made them taste for 
three days the sufferings he had undergone 
for three years, and probably in the very 
same state prison. But the third day his 
anger cooled, and he reversed the former 
sentence, and dismissed them all but one, 
Simeon, whom he kept as a hostage for 
the appearance of Benjamin. From the tried 
cruelty of Simeon's disposition, in the per- 
fidious massacre of the Shechemites, he had 
probably been the most active against 
Joseph himself. 

The remorse of conscience and compunc- 
tion of mind which they felt on this occa- 
sion, and not only felt but expressed in his 
hearing, not knowing that he understood 
their dialect, quite disarmed the remaining 
resentment of Joseph. The trouble of 
Simeon, and his detention in Egypt, brought, 
in a lively manner, to their remembrance 
their dealings with Joseph, and the Egyptian 
bondage into which they had sold him. And 
they said one to another — "We are verily 
guilty concerning our brother, in that we 
saw the anguish of his soul, when he be- 
sought us, and we would not hear ; there- 
fore is this distress come upon us." And 
Reuben answered them, saying, " Spake I not 
unto you, saying, Do not sin against the 
child ; and ye would not hear ] therefore, 
behold, also his blood is required." J oseph 
could not stand this. He turned away from 
them, and wept. But, still firm to his pur- 
pose, he returned, and after causing Simeon 
to be put in bonds before their eyes, he dis- 
missed them; but, as a delicate token of his 
good will, he restored their money in their 
sacks, and gave them provision for their 
journey home. 

On their return home, they told their 
father all that had befallen them. His 
pathetic comment was — "Me have ye be- 
reaved of my children : Joseph is not, and 
Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin 
away: all these things are against me." 
The offer of the more earnest than sagacious 
Reuben to undertake the responsibility of 
Benjamin's safety, with the addition, " Slay 



JOSEPH. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



my two sons, if I bring him not to thee," 
ministered little comfort to the afflicted 
patriarch, who persisted — " My son shall not 
go down with you; for his brother is dead, 
and he is left alone : if mischief befal him by 
the way in the which ye go, then shall ye 
bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave." Thus the matter rested for the 
time ; for as Jacob would not part with 
Benjamin, and his sons would not go without 
him, they remained until all the corn which 
they had brought from Egypt was consumed. 
Then the question was again opened ; and, 
at last, Jacob was obliged to consent to allow 
Benjamin to go with them — encouraged, pro- 
bably, by his confidence in Judah's address 
and force of character. For he was the 
spokesman on this occasion, and solemnly 
engaged to be surety for Benjamin, and to 
" bear the blame for ever " if he did not 
restore him safe to his father. Having given 
his consent, Jacob added such advice as his 
long experience in the world suggested. 
They were to take not only the money re- 
quired for the corn they now wanted, but 
also the former money which had been re- 
turned to them — perhaps by oversight ; and, 
in order to mollify the mysterious " lord of 
the land," of whom he had heard so much, 
it would be well if they took a quantity of 
the choice products of the land of Canaan, 
which were known to be most acceptable in 
Egypt, — being balm, wild honey, spices, 
myrrh, pistachio-nuts, and almonds * — as 
such a present and tribute of respect as 
great men were then, as now in the east, in 
the habit of receiving from those who sought 
their favour. Last of all, as one still 
reluctant, he said, " Take also your brother, 
and arise, and go again unto the man. And 
God Almighty give you mercy before the 
man, that he may send away your other 
brother, and Benjamin. If I be bereaved of 
my children, I am bereaved." 

They went, and arrived in Egypt. One 
morning they made their way to the place 
where Joseph daily transacted his business 
concerning the sale and distribution of the 
?orn. When he saw them, accompanied by a 

* For remarks on these products see the notes to the 
' Pictorial Bible' on Gen. xliii. 



youth whom he guessed to be his brother 
Benjamin, the son of his own mother, he 
directed " the ruler of his house " to take 
them home to his dwelling-house, and to slay 
and make ready ; for it was his intention 1 
that they should dine with him at noon. 
The steward did as he was ordered, and took 
them to his master's house. This proceeding- 
occasioned considerable alarm in the minds 
of Jacob's sons, who thought that perhaps 
some pretext was sought against them, for 
making them bondsmen and taking away 
their asses, in connection with the money 
which was due for the last supply, and which 
they had found returned in their sacks. 
They therefore spoke to the steward, stating 
how the matter really stood; and he, who 
probably knew how they were related to his 
master, and what were his intentions towards 
them, answered them kindly, assuring them 
that nothing was on that account imputed 
to them. He also produced their brother 
Simeon ; and, after having brought them into 
the house, gave them water to wash their 
feet, and provender for their asses. 

When Joseph came home they brought 
him their present, and bowed themselves 
down reverently before him. "And he 
asked them of their welfare, and said, £ Is 
your father well, the old man of whom ye 
spake? Is he yet alive?' And they an- 
swered, ' Thy servant, our father, is in good 
health ; he is yet alive.' And Joseph said, 
'Blessed of God be that old man.'t And 
they bowed down their heads, and made 
obeisance. And he lifted up his eyes, and 
saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, 
and said, t Is this your younger brother, of 
whom ye spake unto me?' And he said, 
' God be gracious unto thee, my son.' And 
Joseph made haste, for his bowels did yearn 
upon his brother ; and he sought where to 
weep ; and he entered into his chamber, and 
wept there." % 

He then washed from his face all trace of 
tears, and returned to them, mastering for a 
while his strong emotions. He commanded 
dinner to be brought; but as it was an 

f This beautiful clause is not in the present Hebrew 
text, but is preserved in the Samaritan and Septuagint. 
+ Gen. xliii. 27—30. 



CHAP. L] 



JOSEPH. 



93 



abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a 
tent-dwelling shepherd, Jacob's sons were 
seated apart from Joseph and his Egyptian 
guests. They were also placed according to 
their seniority, at which they were greatly 
: astonished, for some of them were so nearly 
of an age, that this discrimination implied a 
more intimate knowledge of them, in some 
quarter, than they could suppose that any 
one there possessed. When the small round 
tables were brought in with the provisions, 
i Joseph conferred on Benjamin a truly 
| oriental mark of esteem, by heaping the 
table which was placed before him with five 
times the quantity of food which the other 
tables bore. After the dinner they drank 
wine together and were merry. 




[Egyptians at Meat.] 

Joseph had one more trial in store for his 
brothers before making himself known to 
them. He wished to make their conduct 
towards Benjamin a test of the present state 
of their feelings, and of such repentance of 
their conduct towards himself as would make 
them shrink from allowing harm to befal 
one whom their father so tenderly loved. 
With this view he directed his steward pri- 
vately to introduce his silver drinking-cup 
into the mouth of the youngest brother's 



sack ; and when they were at some distance 
from the city, to pursue them, and, after a 
thorough search, to bring the pretended thief 




[Egyptian Wine Cups.J 



back to him. All this was punctually 
executed: and when the cup was found in 
Benjamin's sack, they were very far from 
manifesting any indifference — very far from 
pursuing their way, and leaving him to that 
slavery in Egypt, to which, in by-gone years, 
they had consigned his brother. They rent 
their clothes in bitter anguish, and all re- 
turned to the city. 

When they re-appeared before Joseph they 
fell on the ground before him; and not 
seeing how Benjamin could be cleared from 
what must seem so plain a case, they only 
answered Joseph's reproaches by declaring 
that Benjamin and they were all his slaves. 
To this Joseph answered that such was not 
his intention: only he with whom the cup 
was found should become his bondsman ; but 
as for the rest, they might return in peace 
to their father. Now was the time for Judah 
— he at whose proposal Joseph had been 
sold for a slave, on the one hand, and who, 
on the other, had become the surety that no 
harm should befal the son of his father's 
right hand, — now was his time to redeem 
his character, and full nobly did he discharge 
that duty. We cannot give his speech 
entire, nor need we ; for who has not often 
turned to that most perfect pattern of 



94 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book II. 



natural and affecting eloquence which was 
ever delivered. It will be remarked that, 
with great address, he abstains from any 
reference to the crime. He does not acknow- 
ledge it ; for that would have been to reflect 
upon Benjamin: nor does he deny it; for 
that would have been to reflect upon the 
justice of Joseph. But all his efforts were 
directed to move his pity for their father — 
for that old man of whom they had spoken 
to him. He touched on every circumstance 
which could evince the strength of that old 
man's love towards Benjamin, and dwelt 
much on the difficulty with which he had 
consented to part with him. Jacob had 
said, " Ye know that my wife bare me two 
sons : And the one went out from me, and I 
said, surely he is torn in pieces ; and I saw 
him not since : And if ye take this also from 
me, and mischief befal him, ye shall bring 
down my gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave." " Now, therefore (continued Judah), 
when I come to thy servant, my father, and 
the lad be not with us ; seeing that his life 
is bound up in the lad's life ; it shall come 
to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not 
with us, that he will die ; . . . and thy ser- 
vants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy 
servant, our father, with sorrow to the 
grave." He concluded in announcing the 
favour he sought, which was, that Benjamin 
might be allowed to return to his father, and 
that he might himself remain a bondsman in 
his stead. 

If all this touches us so deeply, how must 
not Joseph have been affected! He could 
no longer act a part in such a scene as this, 
— he could refrain himself no longer, but 
wept aloud, and made himself Known to 
them, crying, "I am Joseph !" 

Who shall adequately realize or describe 
the profound emotions of that hour ! The 
brethren of Joseph lay dumb before him. 
The quick sense of their wrong against him, 
and the dread of his remembering vengeance, 
— the sensible evidence which they had of 
the power and splendour of him whom they 
sold a naked slave to the Arabians, — and the 
sudden and keen perception that all their 
old malice against him had but worked out 
the fulfilment of the high destinies, the mere 



thought of which had moved their hate and 
envy, and made them heedless of "the anguish 
of his soul," when he entreated the mercy 
which they refused : — all this, with the com- 
plication of circumstances in which they were 
now placed, overwhelmed them, and held 
them mute, in astonishment and remorse. 

Perceiving this, Joseph addressed them in 
words of kindness and encouragement, de- 
siring them to be no longer angry with 
j themselves, but rather to admire the over- 
I ruling providence of God, through which all 
things that had seemed evil and hard to bear 
had worked together for great good to them 
and to himself. He further opened to them 
the plan he had in view for their benefit. As 
the famine was still to continue for five 
years, it would be best for them to return 
home and fetch into Egypt their father, with 
all their households and possessions — that 
they might all be sustained in comfort near 
him, and not come to poverty. Being thus 
reassured, his brethren rose from before his 
feet ; and he kissed them all, and wept upon 
them. 

The rumour had reached the king that 
Joseph's brethren were come; and it is a 
pleasing evidence of the esteem in which he 
was held, and the regard which he had con- 
ciliated, that a domestic incident which was 
calculated to be a satisfaction to him was 
highly agreeable to Pharaoh and all his 
court. The monarch sent for him and 
authorized him to express the kindest inten- 
tions towards them, and the utmost anxiety 
for their welfare. He, as well as Joseph, saw 
that it would be best for them to come to 
Egypt, and he had the consideration to 
direct that they should be well supplied with 
provisions for the way, and that they should 
be furnished with carts, in which the aged 
Jacob, with the women and young children, 
might pass from Canaan to Egypt with more 
comfort than by the more ordinary means of 
conveyance. All this was done ; and, in dis- 
missing thein for their journey, Joseph gave 
each of them two suits of raiment, but dis- 
tinguished his own brother Benjamin by the 
present of five dresses, with the addition of <. 
three hundred shekels-weight of silver. 

We may be sure that this journey home 



CHAP. I.j 




[Carts, from Egyptian Sculptures.] 



was performed with much more speed than 
the former. Then they had to tell then- 
father of one son taken from him, and 
another demanded ; now they had to ac- 
quaint him with the recovery of one who 
had long been lost, and for whom he had 
never ceased to mourn. Joseph had charged 
them to tell his father of " all his glory in 
Egypt and so eager were they to tell it, 
that, as they drew near the camp at Mamre. 
they hastened on before the carts, and told 
him — " Joseph is yet alive, aud he is governor 
over all the land of Egypt ! " At this most 
unexpected and surprising news, "Jacob's 
heart fainted, for he believed them not." 
They therefore told him all the particulars ; 
and by the time they had done so, the carts 
had come up to confirm their story. Then 
the spirit of Jacob revived, and he said, " It 
is enough ; Joseph, my son, is yet alive. I 
will go and see him before I die." 

He soon departed ; and, on his way to 
Egypt, paused at Beersheba to offer sacrifices 
at the altar in that place. There he was 
favoured with a dream, in which God removed 
any doubts he might have felt about the 
ultimate consequences of the important step 
he was now taking, by assuring him that his 
sojourn in Egypt was a part of the divine 
plan concerning his race, which should there 
be fostered into a great nation, and then 
brought forth from thence. Thus encouraged 
and relieved, Jacob proceeded on his way, 
and at last entered Egypt with his sixty-six 
descendants*, accompanied, no doubt, by a 
large retinue of slaves and shepherds. 

* These were all his descendants who went down with 
him from Canaan to Egypt. The number seventy, given 



95 

Joseph, without having as yet consulted 
the king, had, in his mind, fixed upon the 
land of Goshen as their future abode — not 
only as being best suited to a pastoral people, 
but as being that which the Egyptians 
would, from various circumstances, be the. 
most willing to see in their occupation. This 
being a border district in the direction of 
Palestine, was the first part of Egypt which 
Jacob reached ; and he then sent Judah 
onward to the capital to acquaint Joseph 
with his arrival. On learning this, Joseph 
entered his chariot, and sped to meet his 
father. They met. Joseph threw himself 
upon the neck of his dear old father, and 
wept upon his neck a good while. " Now," 
said the greatly moved Jacob, " Now let me 
die, since I have seen thy face, because thou 
art yet alive ! " 

After the first emotions of this meeting 
had subsided, Joseph proceeded to explain 
to his brothers the further measures which 
were necessary. He intended himself to go 
and announce their arrival to Pharaoh, after 
which he would introduce some of them to 
the royal presence, and they were instructed 
what answers to return to the questions 
which the king would be likely to ask. He 
did not conceal from them that " every 
shepherd was an abomination unto the 
Egyptians ;" and his instructions were skil- 
fully framed with a reference to that state 
of feeling. 

So he took with him five of the most 
comely of his brothers, and returned to the 
capital. He first himself went to the king 
to inform him that his father's family had 
arrived, with all their flocks and herds, and 
were now in the land of Goshen, awaiting 
his commands. His brothers were then 
introduced ; and, on being asked what was 
their occupation, they, as they had been 
taught, answered, that they were shepherds, 
as all their fathers had been. They added, 

elsewhere, counts in, besides, Jacob himself, with Joseph 
and his two sons, who were already in Egypt; and the 
number seventy-five, in the New Testament (Acts vii. 14), 
excludes these, but adds to the sixty-five the nine wives of 
Jacob's eleven sons, the wives of Judah and Simeon being 
at this time dead. These results are displayed more largely 
by Dr. Hales, who derives them from a critical examination 
and comparison of the passages which bear on the subject. 



JOSEPH. 



96 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book n. 



that they had come to sojourn in Egypt, for 
in the land of Canaan the drought had been 
so severe that they could find no pasture for 
their flocks ; and concluded with a request 
that they might he allowed to remain among 
the pastures of Goshen. On this the king 
turned to Joseph, and told him that the 
whole land was at his disposal ; to place 
them in the best part of it — in Goshen, if 
that district seemed the most suitable for 
them. He also desired him, if among his 
brothers there were men of sufficient ability, 
to make them overseers of the royal cattle, 
an employment which their previous habits 
and qualifications rendered the most suitable 
for them. 

Joseph's plan for the benefit of his family 
having thus happily succeeded, he introduced 
his father also to the king ; but whether 
immediately after or not is not quite clear. 
The patriarch respectfully saluted Pharaoh, 
in acknowledgment of the consideration and 
favour with which he had been treated ; and 
the king, much struck by his venerable 
appearance, entered into conversation with 
him, particularly inquiring his age. J acob's 
answer was impressive : — " The days of the 
years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and 
thirty years : few and evil have the days of 
the years of my life been, and have not 
attained unto the days of the years of the 
life of my fathers in the days of their 
pilgrimage." After some further conversa- 
tion, probably, Jacob again saluted Pharaoh, 
and withdrew from his presence. 

We are now to regard the Israelites as in 
that pastoral district, on the eastern border 
of the Delta, which the Scriptures call " the 
land of Goshen : " and it may not be unim- 
portant to note the sound and far-sighted 
policy which induced Joseph to fix on that 
district for them, and to procure the grant 
of it from the king. Reverting to the 
information already given concerning the 
shepherd-race, which, not long before this 
time, had held Egypt in subjection, we may 
now further remark, that this land, on 
account of offering the best pasture-grounds 
in Lower Egypt, had been their principal 
settlement, and that in which they main- 



tained themselves for some years after they 
had been expelled from the other parts of 
the country. Having been not long vacated, 
and but little wanted by the Egyptians for 
the pastoral purposes to which it was more 
properly applicable, it seems to have lain at 
this time waste and unoccupied. It was 
therefore a district, the occupation of which 
by the Hebrews dispossessed no one, and 
which, from its peculiar character, the 
Egyptians would see in their occupation 
with as little ill-will as they were capable of 
feeling towards a shepherd-race ; while its 
situation on the borders would tend, in a 
great degree, to keep them apart from the 
Egyptians, and prevent the disputes and 
interferences, as well as the idolatrous con- 
tamination, which might be expected to 
arise in any situation which would have 
involved them more among the natives. 
There were also circumstances which might 
have rendered not only tolerable, but highly 
agreeable, to them, that the Hebrews should 
occupy this district. "It stretched along 
the Bubastic, or Pelusiac branch of the Xile, 
and formed the eastern barrier of Egypt 
towards Palestine and Arabia, the quarters 
from which they most dreaded invasion ; 
and the ' nakedness ' of which they soon had 
the satisfaction of seeing in a short time 
covered by a brave and numerous people, 
amply repaying, by the additional security 
and the resources which they gave to Egypt, 
the hospitable reception which they expe- 
rienced, and the indulgence which was now 
extended to them."* These considerations 
were of especial importance, when Egypt 
would seem not yet to have recovered the 
exhaustion which necessarily followed its 
convulsive efforts to expel the hated race. 

The seven years of famine were, in Egypt, 
succeeded by abundant and seasonable years ; 
for the wonted overflow of the great river 
was not withheld, and therefore the soil 
offered all its rich products in great plenty. 
After having been cherished by his son 
during the remainder of the famine, the 
! aged Jacob lived to see twelve of these 
I fruitful years. Then, seventeen years from 

* Hales, ii. pp. 141, 143. 



CHAP. I.] 



JOSEPH. 



his arrival in Egypt, the partial failure of 
his sight, and decay of his bodily powers, 
gave him warning that the day of his death 
could not be far off. He therefore sent for 
his son Joseph, and expressed an earnest 
desire to lie with his fathers in the cave of 
Machpelah, and engaged his son to promise, 
by oath, that his remains should not be 
buried in Egypt, but carried to the promised 
land. 

Joseph left his father, satisfied with this 
assurance, and returned home ; but he was 
soon recalled by the intelligence that Jacob 
had fallen very ill, and seemed likely to die. 
This time he took with him his two sons, 
Manasseh and Ephraim. When Jacob heard 
that he was come, he exerted his remaining 
strength, and sat up in the bed to receive 
him ; and the cheerfulness and force of 
expression with which he spoke to him, and, 
afterwards, to all his sons, shows that the 
inner lamp continued to burn brightly in 
him, however much his outward lights and 
powers had grown dim. He dwelt on the 
glorious promises of God to him, especially 
at Bethel, and made mention of the death of 
liachel, for whose dear sake — which had first 
recommended Joseph himself to his peculiar 
love — he now proposed to give him a very 
strong mark of his regard. This was, to 
bestow on him, through his two sons, Manasseh 
and Ephraim, a double portion — the portion 
of the first-born — in that rich inheritance 
which awaited his race. Properly, they 
would only divide as grandsons the single 
share of their father ; but he would adopt 
them among his own sons — and as such they 
should each receive a full portion, and be 
counted heads of tribes, even as Reuben, or 
Simeon, or any other of his sons. As Jacob 
could not see clearly, he had not hitherto 
observed that the lads of whom he spoke 
were present with their father ; but now, 
perceiving that there were some persons 
with him, and being told who they were, he 
desired them to be brought nearer, that he 
might bless them. He kissed them, and 
embraced them; and said, tenderly, to Joseph, 
" I had not thought to see thy face ; and, lo! 
God hath showed me also thy seed." In 
causing them to kneel before their reverend 



grandfather, Joseph placed the eldest, Ma- ' 
nasseh, opposite his right hand, and Ephraim 
opposite his left ; but Jacob crossed his 
hands, placing the right upon the head of 
the youngest, Ephraim, and the left upon 
the head of Manasseh ; and when Joseph 
attempted to rectify what he supposed a 
mistake, his father persisted, telling him 
that he acted by the divine direction : and, 
in proceeding to bless them, which he did 
with great fervency and devotion, he not 
only preferred Ephraim to Manasseh, but 
gave him much the larger and nobler bless- 
ing. And how exactly this prophetic blessing 
of the two tribes, which Ephraim and 
Manasseh founded, was fulfilled, the ensuing 
history will show. 

After this, the aged patriarch, feeling his 
strength fail, and that the hour of his death 
approached, called all his sons together, that 
he might, severally, by that prophetic 
impulse which was upon him, tell them 
" what should befall them in the last days." 
This he did in a noble poem — the most 
ancient which any language has preserved — 
describing the several characters of his sons, 
and the distinguishing features of their i 
future possessions in the promised land, in 
language replete with the most beautiful 
and natural imagery, and alternately tender, 
paihetic, and stern. With what force arid 
varied images does he, for instance, describe 
the sufferings and the glory of his beloved 
Joseph, and pray — 

" May the blessings of the heavens from above, 
The blessings of the low-lying deep, 
The blessings of the breasts and of the womb, 
The blessings of thy father and thy mother, 
With the blessings of the eternal mountains, 
The desirable things of the everlasting hills, 
Abound and rest upon the head of Joseph." 

Jacob concluded with repeating to all his 
assembled sons the charge which he had 
already given to J oseph, separately, concern- 
ing his burial in the family sepulchre. He 
then laid himself down on the bed in which 
he had hitherto sat up, and gently died. 
And when Joseph saw that his father no 
longer lived, " he fell upon his father's face, 
and wept upon him, and kissed him." 



98 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



[BOOK II. 



For a person in Joseph's station not to 
embalm Lis father, would have been con- 
sidered a very heinous omission by the 
Egyptians, among whom he lived, and to 
whose general ideas and habits of life he 
conformed. The necessity of taking the 
body to Canaan would also recommend the 
adoption of this process. Joseph therefore 
" commanded his servants, the physicians, to 
embalm his father," according to the fashion 
of the country, and doubtless in the most 
elaborate and Costly of the various processes 
employed. 

As the embalming took a considerable 
time, it appears to have been customary for 
the Egyptians to mourn for the dead while 
this operation was in progress, and till the 
body was deposited in its sepulchre ; but not 
after that, as in other nations where death 
was sooner followed by interment. The 
mourning for Jacob lasted seventy days, and 
out of respect for the father of Joseph, it 
was a public mourning among the Egyptians. 

After this, having obtained the kings 
consent, Joseph set forward to take the 
remains of his father to the sepulchre in 
Canaan, according to his promise. He was 
attended, not only by his own and his father's 
family, but by the chief officers of the royal 
household, and the grandees of the kingdom, 
who, in honour to Joseph, bore him company, 
and took a part in all the solemnities of his 
father's funeral. The cavalcade consisted of 
a great number of chariots and of horsemen, 
so that they made a very great host. The 
principal persons were doubtless accompanied 
by their servants and followers, probably 
with some appearance of military array, for 
protection on the road. If our frequent 
preceding statements are right, the enemies 
they had most to dread were the Philistines, 
close to whose border, if not through whose 
country, they must have passed if they had 
taken the shortest and most obvious route to 
Mamre ; and we imagine that the apprehen- 
sion of an attack from that people explains 
a circumstance which no one has taken the 
trouble to notice, as requiring explanation, 
namely, that they went a great way about, 
across the desert, and by the way of Edom 
and Moab, and incurred the necessity of 



crossing the Jordan — for some reason which 
does not otherwise appear. In fact, the 
latter part of the route coincided with the 
latter part of that which, two centuries after, 
the Hebrew host took to avoid " the way of 
the Philistines." And, as it was, their way, 
till they entered Canaan, lay through the 
lands of tribes descended from Abraham and 
Isaac, who would be likely to respect the 
funeral solemnity of the patriarch. 

After they had passed the Jordan, and had 
marched about three miles beyond it, into 
the plain of Jericho, they came to the large 
open threshing-ground of Atad, which, being 
level, and inclosed by a low wall, offered a 
convenient situation for a halt, and for the 
commencement of those funeral solemnities 
which they had made so long a journey to 
celebrate. Hitherto they had been making 
a journey; now, having entered the land, 
they commenced the funeral solemnities. 
During these seven days " they mourned 
with a great and very sore lamentation;" 
and in this act the Egyptians were, from 
their greater numbers and more marked form 
of wailing, so conspicuous, that, when the 
inhabitants of the land witnessed the mourn- 
ing in the floor of Atad, they said, " This is 
a grievous mourning to the Egyptians ;" and 
hence the pla.ce afterwards bore the name of 
Abel-Mitzraiin*. There may have been some 
policy in commencing the funeral observances 
so immediately on entering the land of 
Canaan; for it served to make their object 
known to the inhabitants, who might else 
have imagined that so formidable a company 
came with no peaceable intentions; and, 
attention being thus early drawn to their 
object, the people of the country, in all the 
way they had stiil to go, would be reminded 
that the sepulchre, to which the remains of 
the patriarch were thus honourably conveyed, 
belonged to a family absent in Egypt. 

From the threshing-ground the cavalcade 
proceeded in solemn march to the vicinity of 
Hebron, where the sons of Jacob had the 
satisfaction of depositing the body of their 
father beside those of Abraham and Sarah, 
Isaac, Rebekah, and Leah, in the cave of 
Machpelah. They then returned to Egypt. 

* The mourning of the Egyptians. 



CHAP. I.] 



JOSEPH. 



99 



While their father was alive, Joseph's 
brethren knew themselves to be secure ; but 
now that he was dead they felt themselves 
wholly at his mercy, and concluded that he 
really hated them in his heart for the wrongs 
they had done to him, and would not be long 
in requiting them for their evil deeds. So 
much more ready was he to forgive than 
they to believe themselves forgiven ; and so 
hard is it for a generous nature to be under- 
stood. They therefore sent a message to 
him, saying that J acob, before he died, had 
told them to send to him, humbly confessing 
their sin against him, but entreating him to 
forgive the trespass of the servants of his 
father's God. We incline to think that this 
was an invention of their own ; as it seems 
far more likely that Jacob would himself 
have charged Joseph on the subject, if he 
had entertained the suspicion that he still 
harboured resentment. Either way, the 
terms in which the message was conceived, 
and the force of its concluding expression, 
were well calculated to operate upon Joseph's 
heart. " If Joseph had been rancorous, this 
deprecation had charmed him; but now it 
resolves him into tears."* And when his 
brothers themselves came in and threw 
themselves at his feet, crving, " Behold, we 
be thy servants ! " he comforted them and 
spoke kindly to them, assuring them of his 
entire forgiveness and continued protection, 
and directing their attention away from 
themselves and their offence to the contem- 
plation of that providence of God which his 
whole history, including that part of it, so 
strikingly manifested, and of which he him- 
self constantly exhibits the most lively sense. 



Joseph survived his father fifty-four years ; 
but nothing further of his public or private 
history is told us. He died at the compara- 
tively moderate age of 110 years, but lived 
to see the great-grand-children of Ephraim 
and the grand-children of Manasseh. But 
before his death he sent for his brothers, and, 
expressing his conviction that God certainly 
would, as he had promised, lead them forth 
in due season from that country, and give 
them possession of their inheritance in 
Canaan, he strictly charged them not to 
leave his bones in Egypt, but to bear them 
away to the promised land, when the time 
of their departure should come. The usages 
of Egypt made the accomplishment of this 
duty easy. His body was embalmed, and 
kept in a coffin or mummy-case, ready for 
that day which no man at that time living 
was destined to see. 

To conclude the history of Joseph, it may 
be as well to add here, that, when the house 
of Israel at last departed from Egypt, the 
promise made to him was not forgotten. 
They took his body with them, committing 
it to the care of the tribe of Ephraim, who 
bore about the precious charge many years, 
in all their wanderings, till they were enabled 
to deposit it in its appointed place, being 
that piece of ground near Shechem which 
Jacob bought for a hundred shekels of silver 
from the Shechemites, and which he be- 
queathed a little before his death to his son 
Joseph. This spot was included in the 
heritage of Ephraim; and there, in a later 
day, a noble monument was erected to the 
memory of J oseph, which still existed in the 
time of Jerome. 



* Bishop Hall, b. ill Cent. *. 



100 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. [BOOK II. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE BONDAGE. 



The history and chronology of the period j 
immediately following the death of Joseph 
is involved in great obscurity, which there 
is only some faint hope of seeing dispelled, 
through the information which is in the 
course of being painfully collected from 
the graven monuments of ancient Egypt. 

The interval between the death of J oseph 
and the birth of Moses is set down by Dr. 
Hales at 65 years. The history of this 
period is given- by the sacred writer in a 
very few words. He commences by enume- 
rating, once more, the sons of Jacob, and 
then informs us that they and all the men of 
their generation died before the affliction of 
the Hebrews in Egypt commenced. Stephen 
appears to intimate (Acts vii. 16) that they 
were all taken to be buried in the ground 
at Shechem, but whether immediately after 
death, or whether their bodies were kept, like 
that of Joseph, to be carried thither at a future 
day, we are not told. The remarkable in- 
crease of the Israelites in Egypt is then 
described with a remarkable amplification of 
terms : — They " were fruitful, and increased 
abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed ex- 
ceeding mighty ; and the land was filled with 
them." That God had promised this, sufh- 
ciently accounts for it : and, acting as usual 
through natural agencies, he had placed 
them in a land of abundance, finely watered, 
and under a warm climate — in a country 
where the females, both of the human species 
and of animals, have ever been reputed to 
exceed all others in fruitfulness. It can also 
be shown that the children of Israel now 
married very early, while the duration of 
life still greatly exceeded that to which it 
has since fallen. All these circumstances 
contributed more or less to the important 
result, and, together, adequately account for 
it, without the need of that directly miracu- 
lous aid which the Jewish writers claim ; 
but which we know was never needlessly 
employed when the Divine blessing upon 



existing causes sufficed for the required 

effect. 

There is one matter, concerning which 
further information than we possess would 
be very gratifying : this is respecting the 
precise situation which Joseph's family oc- 
cupied after his death, and how far it was 
affected by the high station their father had 
occupied, and by their maternal derivation 
from a distinguished family in Egypt. Born 
in that country and brought up in courts 
and palaces, under an Egyptian mother, 
their pastoral relatives from Canaan must at 
first have been strangers and foreigners to 
Ephraim and Manasseh. And from this the 
question arises, at what time, and under 
what circumstances, the family of Joseph 
threw aside their Egyptian character, and 
joined themselves to their pastoral brethren 
in Goshen. We find no answer to this : but 
we may be sure that Joseph taught his sons 
to regard the prospects which that connection 
opened, as more truly glorious than any 
which Egypt could offer to them. The in- 
termediate position and parentage of this 
family was probably for a time made instru- 
mental in confirming the advantages which 
the Hebrews enjoyed in Egypt ; and when 
circumstances arose which compelled them 
to take a more determined position, as 
Hebrews or as Egyptians — if they had not 
spontaneously done so before — we know, 
from the result, that they hesitated not to 
unite themselves to the sojourners in Goshen. 
All the positive information concerning them 
which we can find is contained in the genea- 
logies with which the books of Chronicles 
open. From this source we learn that Ma- 
nasseh had no children by his wife, but the 
son of a Syrian concubine was his heir*. 
The only other circumstance with which we 
are thus made acquainted relates to the 
tribe of Ephraim, and is interesting as 
showing, not only that this tribe entered into 

* 1 Chron. vii. 14. 



I OHAP. II.] 

\. 1 

the Bedouin character with great spirit, but 
as perhaps evincing that the Hebrews in 
Goshen understood and entered into the 
Egyptian policy, as against the Philistines, 
with which the occupation of that land had 
been assigned to them. A body of Ephraim- 
ites, headed by the sons of Zabad, the sixth 
in descent from Ephraim, undertook a kind 
of freebooting expedition into the land of 
the Philistines w ith the immediate view of 
driving off the cattle belonging to the people 
of Gath ; but they were resisted by the 
Philistines and repulsed with much slaugh- 
ter, and Zabad lost all his sons*. This was 
exactly such an expedition as Bedouin 
pastors are at this day prone to undertake ; 
and, considering that it was undertaken in 
the most bitter days of the "bondage," it 
lays open certain inferences which we shall 
presently deduce from it : while it may pro- 
bably have been entered upon with the view 
of convincing the Egyptians that no such 
good understanding existed between them 
and the Philistines, as appears to have been 
made one of the reasons or pretences for 
their oppression. 

Towards the latter end of the interval 
between Joseph and Moses we are told that 
another king arose who " knew not Joseph." 
In such a country as Egypt, this, with the 
resulting consequences, must imply some- 
thing more than the mere succession of one 
king of the same family to another, — it must 
imply a change of dynasty ; and not only 
such a change, but that the new dynasty was 
not native to that kingdom which Joseph 
had saved, and the condition of which was 
still materially affected by the measures he 
had taken. This has been so strongly felt, 
that there has been a general disposition to 
consider that the change consisted in the 
intrusion of the shepherd-race, to which the 
king who " knew not Joseph" belonged. 
But this conclusion is no longer tenable : for 
a close examination of the historical evidence 

* 1 Chron. vii. 21, 22. In the text, as it stands, the name 
of Ephraim has been substituted for that of Zabad in the 
verse. " And Ephraim their father mourned many days, 
and his brethren came to comfort him." It is impossible 
that Ephraim should then have been alive to mourn over 
the gew.-n.th generation of his descendants. Read ' Zabad,' 
and all becomes intelligible. 



101 

demonstrates that the shepherd-race had 
been expelled from Egypt before the time of 
Joseph ; and this is confirmed beyond dispute 
by the graven testimony which the old 
monuments of that country now offer. The 
new dynasty must, therefore, be sought in 
another quarter. 

After an anxious survey of the thick 
clouds which hang over the chronology of 
this period, for some ray of light which 
might guide through its utter darkness, we 
turn away as disappointed as all our pre- 
decessors. Nothing, therefore, remains for 
us but to make such accommodations, and so 
to balance the various difficulties, as to 
obtain the result which, without being cer- 
tain of its truth, seems the best and the 
most probable under all the circumstances. 

It has been our earnest desire to avail 
ourselves of the facts, few though they 
be, which the long and well-directed re- 
searches of Mr. Wilkinson have enabled him 
to collect from the graven muniments of 
Egypt. But it has also been our purpose to 
use the dates which are assigned by Hales 
to the principal events recorded in the 
Scriptures ; and how it is possible to use 
both is a question of serious difficulty, seeing 
that the chronology of Hales differs con- 
siderably from that in common use, which 
Wilkinson has adopted, — from which it ne- 
cessarily happens that circumstances, which 
apply very well under the received chro- 
nology, lose their Scriptural connection when 
the dates of Hales are applied to them. To 
illustrate this by an example. According to 
Wilkinson the reign of Osirtasen I. com- 
menced in 1740, B.C., and continued for at 
the least 43 years. Now, according to the com- 
mon Bible chronology, which Mr. Wilkinson 
adopts, "the arrival of Jacob"* took place 
in the year 1706, whence he necessarily 
infers that this Osirtasen is the "Pharaoh" 
whom the history of Joseph makes known so 
favourably to us. But, according to Hales, 
this date for Jacob's arrival is wrong, and 
should be 1863 ; so that then the arrival of 
Jacob would appear to have preceded the 

* Mr. W. has "arrival of Joseph" in both his ' Egypt 
and Thebes' and ' Ancient Egyptians.' But this is a pal- 
pable slip of the pen for Jacob. 



THE BONDAGE. 



102 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



commencement of Osirtasen's reign by 123 
years, whence it would result that this 
monarch, instead of being the patron of 
Joseph, and he who gave to the house 01 
Israel a possession in Egypt, would turn out 
to be the very king that " knew not J oseph," 
and he who commenced the oppression of 
the Hebrew race. Here is a very grave diffi- 
culty, which is not at all lessened by the 
fact that " the names and era of the monarchs 
before Osirtasen I. are uncertain. Very few 
monuments remain of a date prior to his 
reign ; but the names of many kings occur 
in the sculptures as his predecessors."* 

Now the scriptural dates of Hales are too 
clearly established, for their relinquishment 
or modification to be thought of, even for the 
sake of the benefit which might be derived 
from the Egyptian facts collected by Wil- 
kinson. Yet these facts are so much more 
in agreement with the Hebrew history of 
the time than any information we previously 
possessed, that, while still adhering to our 
preference of Hales's dates, we should sin- 
cerely regret this consequence of that pre- 
ference. The only course by which an 
accommodation could be effected, would be 
by carrying back the reign of Osirtasen to the 
time which Hales assigns to the elevation of 
Joseph ; thus erasing the discrepancy of 
123 years. To most of our readers this may 
seem too bold and unwarrantable an opera- 
tion : but to those who know the uncertainty 
in which the profane chronology of those 
times is involved, and the ease with which 
centuries are bandied about by the chro- 
nologers to suit their occasions, nothing 
would seem easier than to make such an 
alteration for the sake of accommodating 
circumstances. 

It must not for an instant be supposed 
that Mr. Wilkinson's collective dates have 
the authority which they would have, if 
taken directly from sculptured monuments. 
This is very far from being the case. His 
best, materials for a chronological table 
consist of the names of kings, with the 
duration of their reigns, as given by the 
sculptures. If we had an unbroken and 
complete series of these names — if we could 

* 'Egypt and Thebes/ 509, note. 



be certain that they did not sometimes, like 
the duration under particular circumstances 
of royal reigns in the Bible, run into one 
anotner, — and if the new branch of learning 
which involves the right understanding of 
these inscriptions were in a more advanced 
state, — it might be easy to obtain some 
certain results by reckoning the intervals 
backward or forward from any ascertained 
point. But as none of these conditions are 
answered ; and as, above all, the want of a 
complete series of these names and eras 
makes it necessary to help out the calculation 
by including the estimate of average dura- 
tions, as well as by introducing an inter- 
pretation of the differently interpreted eras 
of Manetho, a tolerably fair approximation 
is the most that can be expected. And when 
we further consider that no fixed point from 
which to reckon back, in the construction of 
a chronological table from these materials, 
occurs earlier than the contemporary reigns 
of Shishak and Solomon; and that in the 
backward computation, with the check of 
the vulgar era for the Deluge, there is the 
constant disposition to "pare the times to 
the quick," from the fear, avowed by Mr. 
Wilkinson, of interfering with that event, 
— then it may appear that even such a 
difference as 123 years does not offer an 
insurmountable obstacle to the adoption of 
Mr. Wilkinson's historical data. In intro- 
ducing his chronological table, he says 
himself, "the contemporary reigns of Shishak 
and Solomon afford the earliest fixed epoch 
for the construction of a chronological table; 
but reckoning back the number of the years 
of each king's reign, either according to 
Manetho, the dates on the monuments, or 
the average length of their ordinary duration, 

we may arrive at a fair approximation ■ 

But I offer this table with great deference, j 
and shall willingly yield to any opinion that j 
may be established on more positive and 
authentic grounds." t 

Upon the whole, we incline to think it 
possible that, through the constant operation 
of a disposition to narrow and keep down 
the intervals, in reckoning them backward 
from Shishak, from the fear of ultimately 

\ • Egypt and Thebes,' 506, 507- 



CHAP. II.] 



THE BONDAGE. 



103 



getting into too close an approximation with 
the Deluge, Mr. Wilkinson may very well be 
supposed to have lost the century which is 
wanting to make the times of Joseph and 
Osirtasen synchronise, and to produce a 
correspondence between the Egyptian and 
Hebrew history of the ensuing years. The 
preceding explanation is designed to excuse 
or justify this assumption, which offers the 
only available alternative on which we can 
proceed without entirely fo; egoing the benefit 
of that correspondence of events which he 
has indicated. But this is still a course to 
which we are rather constrained by the 
urgency of circumstances, than one which, 
had any other alternative been open, we 
should willingly have chosen. 

Now then, assuming that, notwithstanding 
the difference of dates, Osirtasen I. really 
was, as Mr. Wilkinson conceives, the Pharaoh 
whom the history of Joseph makes so favour- 
ably known to us, we may proceed to state 
that this monarch belonged to a dynasty of 
Tanites— taking its name from Tanis, the 
Zoan of the Hebrew Scriptures. The in- 
formation concerning this and the other 
sovereigns whom we have to mention, is 
derived from the sculptured scenes of war, 
or of regal, civil, or domestic life, which 
belong to their several reigns. With respect 
to Osirtasen I., Mr. Wilkinson observes, " If 
the name of this monarch was not ennobled 
by military exploits equal to those of Re- 
meses, the encouragement given to the arts 
of peace, and the nourishing state of Egypt 
during his rule, evince his wisdom ; and his 
pacific character satisfactorily accords with 
that of the Pharaoh who so generously re- 
warded the talents and fidelity of a Hebrew 
stranger." It is important to notice that, 
whereas in former times Egypt appears to 
have been divided into two distinct states, 
each of which had its own king, the whole 
had, in or before his time, been consolidated 
into one monarchy: for the title, "lord of 
the upper and lower country," affixed to his 
name, evinces that Osirtasen was the sole 
monarch of the Thebaid and Lower Egypt ; 
as does also the presence of his name on a 
colonnade of the great temple at Karnak. 
There were two other kings of this dynasty, 



both of the name of Amun-m-gori; and it 
terminated some years before the death of 
Joseph, who may, with great probability, be 
supposed to have taken the opportunity of 
retiring from public life; although as the 
succeeding dynasty was of Memphis, and 
could not be unacquainted with his services, 
and with the true character of the circum- 
stances under which the house of Israel 
obtained a dwelling-place in Egypt, it is not 
likely that the change made any alteration 
in their position. Of the kings of these two 
dynasties, after Osirtasen I., the most re- 
markable were Amun-m-gori II., in whom 
the Tauite dynasty terminated, and Osir- 
tasen II., with whom the Memphite dynasty 
commenced. ' : Independent of the encourage- 
ment given by them to the agricultural 
interests of the country, they consulted 
the welfare of those who were employed in 
the inhospitable desert ; and the erection of 
a temple and a station to command the wells, 
and to serve for their abode in Wady Jasoos, 
proved that they were mindful of their 
spiritual as well as temporal protection. The 
breccia quarries of the Kossayr* road were 
already opened, and probably also the emerald 
mines of Gebel Zabara."t The Memphite 
dynasty lasted 71 years, terminating 60 years 
after the death of Joseph, and four years 
(according to Wilkinson) before the birth of 
Moses. The next dynasty was of Thebes, 
and, as such, may be concluded to have been 
comparatively ignorant of the transactions 
in Lower Egypt in which Joseph took so 
conspicuous a part. 

The scriptural narrative goes on to tell us 
that " there arose up a new king [or dynasty] 
over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." Now 
this new king is regarded by Mr. Wilkinson 
as Amosis, the first monarch of this Theban 
dynasty. He says,— " Amosis or Ames was 
the leader of the eighteenth dynasty; and 
the period of his accession and this change 
in the reigning family strongly confirms the 
opinion of his being the new king who knew 
not Joseph. And if we consider that he was 
from the distant province of Thebes, it is 
reasonable to expect that the Hebrews would 



* Usually spelled " Cosseir." 
t • Ancient Egyptians,' i. 45. 



104 



THE BIELE HISTORY. 



[book II 



be strangers to him, and that he was likely 
to look upon them with the same distrust 
and contempt with which the Egyptians 
usually treated foreigners. They stigmatised 
them with the name of impure Gentiles ; 
and the ignoble occupation of shepherds was 
for the Jews an additional cause of reproach. 
Indeed, it is possible that the Jews, who had 
come to Egypt on the occasion of the famine, 
finding the great superiority of the land of 
Egypt, both for obtaining the necessaries of 
life and for feeding their flocks, may have 
asked and obtained a grant of land from the 
Egyptian monarch, on condition of certain 
services being performed by them and their 
descendants. As long as the Memphite 
dynasty continued on the throne, this grant 
was respected, and the only service required 
of them was that agreed upon in the original 
compact. But on the accession of the Theban 
family, the grant being rescinded, and the 
service still required, they were reduced to a 
state of bondage ; and, as despotism seldom 
respects the rights of those it injures, ad- 
ditional labour was imposed upon this un- 
resisting people. And Pharaoh's pretended 
fear, lest in the event of war they might 
make common cause with the enemy, was a 
sufficient pretext with his own people for 
oppressing the Jews, at the same time that 
it had the effect of exciting their prejudices 
against them. Affecting, therefore, some 
alarm at their numbers, he suggested that so 
numerous a body might avail themselves of 
the absence of the Egyptian troops, and 
endanger the safety and tranquillity of the 
country, and that prudence dictated the 
necessity of obviating the possibility of such 
an occurrence. With this view they were 
treated like captives taken in war, and were 
forced to undergo the gratuitous labour of 
erecting public granaries and other buildings 
for the Egyptian monarch. These were prin- 
cipally constructed of crude brick ; and that 
such materials were commonly used in Egypt 
we have sufficient proof from the walls and 
other buildings of great size and solidity 
found in various parts of the country, many 
of which are of a very early period ; and the 
bricks themselves, both at Thebes and in the 
vicinity of Memphis, bear the names of the 



monarch who ruled Egypt during and prior 
to the period to which I am now alluding. 
The crude brick remains about Memphis are 
principally pyramids ; those at Thebes con- 
sist of walls inclosing sacred monuments and 
tombs, and some are made with and others 
without straw. Many have chopped barley 
and wheat straw, others bean-halm, and 
stubble*; and in the tombs we find the 
process of making them represented among 
the sculptures. But it is not to be supposed 
that any of these bricks are the work of the 
Israelites, who weie never occupied at Thebes ; 
and although Josephus affirms that they 
were engaged in building pyramids as well 
as in making canals and embankments, it is 
very improbable that the crude brick pyra- 
mids of Memphis, or of the Arsinoite nome, 
were the work of the Hebrew captives." 

The idea of Mr. Wilkinson, that there was 
an original agreement for certain services to 
be performed by Jacob's family and their 
descendants, is, as far as we know, a new 
one. We do not think that this, under all 
the circumstances, as recorded in the book 
of Genesis, is very likely ; unless to this 
extent, that there was an understood con- 
dition, — that the Hebrews were to guard 
that part of the open frontier committed to 
them, against the intrusion of other shepherd 
races, and especially against the Philistines. 
In fact, although the Hebrews themselves 
knew, from prophecy, that they were to make 
a considerable stay in Egypt, and grow there 
into a nation, it is not clear that the 
Egyptians themselves had at first any such 
expectation or intention, and without it they 
were most unlikely to stipulate for any services 
to be performed. The family of Jacob came 
to be nourished during the years of famine ; 
and a district was assigned them, in which 
they might stay with their flocks and herds. 
Their longer stay was probably not expected. 
But when the years of plenty came, the 
influence of Joseph, joined, probably, to the 
experience of the usefulness of their presence 
on that frontier, would prevent the attempt, 
or perhaps even the wish, to require their 
removal: and it was only when, — under a 

* Exod. v. 12. Some bricks were made by the oppressed 

Hebrews with " stnt-ble instead of straw." 



CHAP. II.] 



THE BONDAGE. 



105 



new dynasty, which cared little for the I 
services which Joseph had rendered to the 
state,— the length of their stay seemed to 
intimate that they were likely to become a 
fixed part of the population, and when the 
rapid increase in their numbers brought 
their position strongly before the govern- 
ment, — that any strong measures were taken 
with them, or any attempt made to exact 
services from them. The Egyptian govern- 
ment was right in directing its attention to 
a subject of this importance, with the view 
of taking such measures as the security of 
the country might seem to require. But the 
measures which it did take — however right 
in abstract policy — were wrong and bad, 
because they were unjust. The Egyptians 
had no right to require from the Hebrews 
any services but such as agreed with their 
condition as a free pastoral people ; and the 
customs of the east indicate that the only 
just and proper condition they could have 
imposed was that of military service, when- 
ever such service might be required. The 
condition of the Hebrews in Egypt bore 
much analogy to that of the Eelauts, or 
wandering clans, of Persia; and we have 
some plain indications that their character 
was not very dissimilar — being, in fact, that 
which belongs to all tribes similarly cir- 
cumstanced. Persia alone now offers " the 
anomaly of a large portion of the people 
with nomadic habits, existing separately from 
the rest, yet residing in the heart of the 
community, of which they form a constituent 
part, and supplyiny the principal military 

force of the country These various 

tribes are bold and free as their brethren of 
the mighty steppes, from whom many of 
themselves are sprung, warlike, rude, quarrel- 
some, eager for plunder, despising the pacific 
drudges that occupy the cultivated tracts 
and cities in the neighbourhood of their wild 
haunts — w andering, almost at will, over 
pathless deserts, like the wild ass in his 
plains — idle and profligate, yet hospitable 
and generous."* There is good reason to 
conclude that the bad, not less than the 
good, points of this most true portraiture 
belonged to the Hebrews of this period. We 

* J. H. Frazer's * Persia,' 360. 



grievously mistake if we regard them as a 
race of innocent and simple shepherds, piping 
and singing beside the streams, or under the 
shadow of some tree or rock. Not this, but 
the very reverse, is the character of the 
oriental shepherd. And, as oriental shep- 
herds, it is certain that the character of the 
Hebrews must have offered much which 
could not but be, and actually was, highly 
distasteful to the Egyptians: and it is not 
by any means unlikely that some acts of 
theirs — very natural to them, but very dis- 
agreeable to the Egyptians — may have 
brought the anomalous position of the He- 
brew people very strongly under the notice 
of a government not disposed to regard their 
proceedings with that indulgence which they 
had previously received. 

Upon the whole, the matter seems to have 
been one which really required the best 
attention of the government. But this is all : 
for, unless on the ground of necessity, " the 
tyrant's plea," the measures which were 
taken admit of no palliation or excuse. 
They might have been required to vacate 
the territory which they occupied, and retire 
into the desert ; or the obligation of military 
service might have been justly exacted from 
them, not only in the defence of the frontier 
on which they were placed, but in any war 
which the Egyptians undertook. To both 
these courses it appears that they saw objec- 
tions ; and their objections to the last of 
them may be conjectured from the fact, that 
the Eelaut tribes of Persia, without relin- 
quishing their own habits of life, have been 
able to take the government of the country 
— for the kings of Persia have, for more than 
a century past, been chiefs of some of those 
tribes ; and the hereditary aristocracy of the 
country is formed by the general body of 
those chiefs. Yet the Eelauts of Persia 
compose scarcely a fourth of its population. 
This, therefore, while it shows the objections 
which the Egyptians might have to employ 
the pastoral Hebrews in their military opera- 
tions, may convey an intimation that the 
apprehensions of the Egyptians, however 
unfounded, were not so entirely chimerical, 
or so merely pretended, as some writers 
imagine. 



106 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



The course -which the Egyptians deter- 
mined to adopt was to remove the anomalous 
condition, by compelling them to relinquish 
their mode of life as tent-dwelling shepherds, 
and to fix them down as cultivators of the 
soil, in that land which had originally been 
granted to them for pasturage. It appears 
to have been also calculated that the severity 
of the assimilating operations upon a free 
and proud people, unaccustomed to labour, 
and hating the pacific drudgery to which 
they must be reduced, would have much 
effect in breaking their spirit and in keeping 
their numbers down. It was in the first 
place required that they should make bricks, 
and with them build towns and villages. 
The principal towns, Pithom and Rameses, 
were to be strong places, probably intended 
to be held by Egyptians to enforce the new 
operations, as well as to furnish secure places 
to which they might bring, and in which 
they might treasure up, the proportion of 
corn and other produce which was to be paid 
to the king. For this, certain officers were 
made responsible; and hence it was made 
imperative on them to enforce the measures 
by which only the required amounts could 
be realized. The situation of these "treasure 
cities " for Pharaoh is not well known ; but 
all accounts agree in giving them a place in 
the land which the Hebrews occupied. Be- 
fore, also, the land could be well brought 
into cultivation, it was necessary to cut 
canals, to construct dams, and to execute 
most of the other works which have been 
already enumerated. Undertakings so hate- 
ful as these to a Bedouin people, we know 
can only be executed by sheer compulsion 
and under immediate superintendence and 
control. The Egyptians evidently knew this 
to be necessary, especially when not only 
the work but its object was detestable. The 
execution of the royal orders was therefore 
confided to men, " task-masters," who were 
charged with responsibilities which made 
them exact very strictly the services re- 
quired. Thus " the Egyptians made the 
children of Israel to serve with rigour : and 
they made their lives bitter with hard bond- 
age, in mortar, and in brick, and in all 
manner of service in the field : all the ser- 



vice, wherein they made them serve, was 
with rigour." 

It is not to be supposed that such a people 
as the Hebrews, and so numerous as they 
had now become, submitted very patiently 
to such measures as these, or that the co- 
ercion which was necessary to their execu- 
tion was unattended with expense and dif- 
ficulty. Finding this, and observing that 
the more the Israelites were oppressed the 
more they multiplied and spread, the king 
determined to take effectual measures to 
prevent their increase, and ultimately to 
ensure their extinction. To this end orders 
were given to the midwives to destroy all 
the male children at the birth, preserving 
the females — probably with a view to their 
being ultimately employed in the domestic 
service, or taken into the harems, of the 
Egyptians, who on more than one occasion 
appear to have much admired the compara- 
tively fresh complexion of the Hebrew 
women. But the midwives paid no attention 
to the command ; and when they were 
charged with this neglect, they excused 
themselves by alleging that the superior 
vigour of the Hebrew women left no occa- 
sion for their assistance, and withheld the 
opportunity of obedience from them. On 
this the enraged king hesitated no longer at 
a more open exhibition of his murderous 
design, and commanded his people to see 
that every male Hebrew child which might 
thereafter be born was thrown into the river. 
What horror then hung over the house of 
Israel, to which the abstract love of offspring 
was an absorbing passion, and all whose 
future hopes depended upon and were con- 
nected with the possession of a numerous 
issue! Yet now, at this very time, when 
men in their weak counsels proposed utterly 
to root up the vine of Israel, which had 
already spread out its branches so widely 
and borne such abundant fruit — now, it 
pleased God to call into existence the future 
Deliverer, and to make the very evils to 
which his infancy was exposed the means of 
his preparation for that high office which 
was in a distant day to devolve upon him. 

There was one Amram, a son of Kohath 
and grandson of Levi, who had been blessed 



CHAP. IT.] 



THE BONDAGE. 



107 



with a daughter, Misraim, and a son, Aaron, 
before this time of deep affliction came. 
Another son was born soon after the promul- 
gation of the king's murderous edict. Under 
that edict those parents who would avoid 
the greater horror of seeing their new-born 
babes torn from them, and destroyed by the 
rude hands of the Egyptians, chose rather 
themselves to commit them to the broad 
stream tenderly and with tears. But the 
infant born to Am ram proved so very fine a 
child, that his mother was struck with a 
more than ordinary reluctance to allow this 
office to be discharged. It was postponed 
from day to day for three months, during which 
his existence was kept carefully concealed. 
But at the end of that time, finding that it 
was not possible to hide him longer, and 
aware that a discovery would bring ruin 
upon others who were as dear to her, she 
determined to resign him to the providence 
of God. She took one of the common 
baskets made from the papyrus, and strength- 
ened it, and rendered it impervious to the 
water by coating it on the outside with 
bitumen and inside with the slime of the 
Nile. "When the babe had been laid in this 
frail bark, it was placed among the flags 
which grew upon the river's brink, and the 
young Miriam, then about nine or ten years 
old, was left to watch at a distance, to see 
what might befall her infant brother. 

Now, in the good providence of God, it 
happened that at this time the king's 
daughter came down with her maidens to 
bathe in the river. As they walked along its 
bank the princess perceived the ark, and 
sent one of her damsels to bring it to her. 
When she saw the child, its beauty and its 
tears touched her heart ; and, although she 
knew that it must be one of the Hebrew 
children whom her father had doomed to 
destruction, she determined to preserve it. 
The little girl, who had now drawn nigh, 
perceiving that she was moved to compassion, 
ventured to ask, " Shall I go and call to thee 
a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may 
nurse the child for thee?" And no sooner 
did she hear the blessed answer, " Go," than 
she ran to make her anxious mother the 
happiest of women, by calling her to be the 



nurse of her own lost child. " Take this 
child away," said the king's daughter to her, 
" and nurse it for me, and I will give thee 
thy wages." And only a mother can under- 
stand, in all their depth, the feelings of relief 
and thankfulness with which Jochebed 
yielded obedience to this command. 

When the child needed a nurse no longer 
— probably when he was about three years 
of age — he was taken home to the house of 
the princess by whom he had been saved. 
The Jewish traditions give to her the name 
of Thermuthis, and undertake to tell us that 
she had long been married without being 
blessed with any child. Therefore, " the 
good lady did not breed him up as some 
child of alms, or as some wretched outcast, 
for whom it might be favour enough to live ; 
but as her own son — in all the delicacies, in 
all the learning of Egypt. Whatever the 
court or school could put into him he wanted 
not."* She gave him the name of -Moses. 
from some Egyptian words signifying " taken 
from the water;" and possibly not without 
reference to the name Amosis which her 
father bore. 

As the young Hebrew, thus in very infancy 
honoured and distinguished, does not again 
come under our notice until forty years of 
age, we may pass the interval in inquiring 
into the intermediate state of the Hebrew 
people. 

The murderous edict against the infants of 
Israel does not seem to have continued long 
in force ; but we are unacquainted with the 
considerations which led to its repeal. It 
may be that the people of Lower Egypt 
generally, were not prepared to go to this 
extent with the court in its measures against 
the Hebrews, and that the murmurs of their 
outraged feelings were heard and respected : 
or it may be that "Thermuthis" had in- 
terest enough with her father to induce him 
to recall his barbarous edict. But as the 
birth of Moses appears to have taken place 
in the latter end of his reign, it seems as 
well to suppose that the accession of a new 
king was attended with a change of policy 
towards the Hebrews, which involved the 
preservation of their children's lives, and 
* Hall, ' Contemplations/ b. i, cont. ii. 



108 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



which to this extent may have been influ- 
enced by the sister of the new monarch. We 
conceive, however, that in resolving to spare 
their lives, it was determined to make those 
lives a valuable property to the state. Amu- 
noph I., the new sovereign, bears the cha- 
racter of " a great encourager of the arts of 
peace;"* which implies that he much en- 
gaged himself in the internal improvement 
of the country. For the works aud under- 
takings, in which such improvements con- 
sist, hands were necessary; and as Egypt 
does not appear, for a hundred years pre- 
viously, to have been engaged in any im- 
portant wars which might have supplied the 
captive hands usually employed in such un- 
dertakings, the destruction of the Hebrew 
children could not but have seemed to the 
king a prodigal waste of a power which he 
much wanted and could well turn to profit- 
able account. From a careful comparison of 
small circumstances, which it would be 
tedious to state in detail, it therefore appears 
to us that at that time, or soon after, the 
order to destroy the Hebrew children was 
withdrawn, the attempt to assimilate them, 
or to fix them down in Goshen as cultivators 
attached to the soil, was also relaxed, though 
probably not quite abandoned ; but that, in- 
stead of this, certain proportions of the 
people were, in periodical rotation, drafted 
off for the public service, and dispersed in 
bodies throughout Lower and Middle Egypt, 
if not to more distant parts of the kingdom, 
to labour under the inspection of Egyptian 
officers. It is useless to inquire very minutely 
into the particular description of their ser- 
vices, or of the places where they wrought, 
— to ask whether they erected this fabric, or 
laboured in that quarry or this mine ; — it is 
enough to know that they were employed 
" in all manner of service " for which human 
thews and sinews were required. To render 
their services more valuable, many of them 
were, according to Josephus, compelled to 
learn handicraft employments, that they 
might exercise them for the benefit of their 
oppressors. And a confirmation of this, and, 
indeed, of the view we are generally taking, 
may be found among the genealogical lists 

* Wilkinson's ' Ancient Egyptians,' i. 50. 



J of names with which the Chronicles open: 
for there we are told of one set of families, 
of the tribe of Judah, who were engaged in 
the manufacture of cotton, and of another 
set of the same tribe, who were potters, 
employed by the king in Lis own workf. 
From the same source we learn that one 
family of this tribe went and settled in the 
land of Moab, but in the end returned again 
to Egypt J — an extraordinary circumstance, 
only to be accounted for by the recollection 
of the intense desire with which even the 
Israelites in the wilderness longed for the 
plenty and comforts of that rich land, and 
were with difficulty hindered from returning 
thither. It is more than probable that many 
of the Hebrews were also employed in culti- 
vating the crow r n lands ; for it is certain they 
were employed in agriculture, and the law 
assumes them to be well acquainted with 
agricultural operations. And now, while we 
justly reprobate the unprincipled system 
under which a free people were thus, by 
severe compulsion, reduced to servile labour, 
we must not be unmindful that it was a part 
of the divine plan concerning them, that 
they should be broken from their nomade 
habits and established in a settled commu- 
nity. A large proportion of the laws in the 
Mosaical code are expressly adapted to this 
end. And the case being such, it is obvious 
that their harsh Egyptian training in agri- 
culture and the arts of settled life, must 
have tended very greatly to facilitate that 
transition — a transition so rare and so ex- 
ceedingly difficult, that perhaps nothing less 
than the strong compulsion now imposed, 
could have brought them into an adequate 
state of preparation for it. Thus was every 
step in the history of this remarkable people 
— even their afflictions and bondage — made 
instrumental in working out their special 
destinies. 

As we have already intimated, by the use 
of the words " periodical rotation," we do 
not suppose that the same men of the 
Hebrews were kept constantly employed in 
the public service. All probability and 
analogy would rather lead us to conclude 

f 1 Chron. iv. 21, 23. 
T 1 Chron. iv. ?2. 



CIIJ.P. II.] 

that the whole of the Hebrew population, 
excepting the women, the chief persons in 
each tribe, the old people, and those who 
were too young for labour — which exceptions 
probably will in most cases amount to about 
three-fourths of the whole of any popula- 
tion, — were divided into gangs, which served 
in rotation; the individuals of each gang 
being allowed to return to their families in 
Goshen when their period of service had 
expired, and to attend to their own affairs 
until their turn came round to take the 
place of another relieved gang. It will be 
seen how well this explanation agrees with 
and illustrates the position which they 
seemed to occupy in Egypt when the time 
of their deliverance approached. 

Amunoph I. was, according to both Ma- 
netho and the sculptures, succeeded by his 
sister, Amense; but as her husband seems, 
in her right, to have wielded the regal 
powers, under the name of Thothmes I., she 
is passed over by some of the old copyists of 
Manetho, and in the sculptures her reign is 
included in his. Now, as the patroness of 
Moses was the daughter of Amosis and sister 
to his successor Amunoph, we shall scarcely 
be thought too bold in hazarding the con- 
jecture that she was the very princess who, 
with her husband, succeeded Amunoph. We 
have already stated the tradition and the 
probability that she was married but had no 
son; and, as a confirming circumstance of 
identity, it may be mentioned that this 
Amense and Thothmes I. were themselves 
succeeded in like manner as they had suc- 
ceeded Amunoph, — that is, a queen occurs, 
named Amun-neit-gori, whose reign is in- 
cluded in that of a king, Thothmes II., who 
appears to have been her husband, suggest- 
ing that Amense and Thothmes I. left no 
son, but were succeeded by a daughter 
jointly with her husband. Further, the for- 
tieth year of Moses, when he comes again 
under our notice, coincides exactly with the 
accession of Amense and Thothmes I. ; and 
this coincidence is not only corroboratory of 
our conjecture, but helps to throw light upon 
the circumstances which we have now to 
consider. 

Moses was brought up as the adopted son 



109 

of Pharaoh's daughter, and as such was in- 
structed in all that " wisdom " of the 
Egyptians which was the admiration and a 
proverb of all surrounding nations. The 
value of the education which he received 
need not be lightly estimated. For let it be 
recollected that then, and long after, Egypt 
infinitely surpassed all other nations in 
moral and physical science, in knowledge 
and in art ; and let it be borne in mind that 
— " If a philosopher sought knowledge, 
Egypt was the school, — if a prince required 
a physician, it was to Egypt he applied, — if 
any material point perplexed the decision of 
kings or councils, to Egypt it was referred."* 
It may, therefore, be reasonably inferred 
that the information which Moses acquired, 
and the powers of mind which were in him 
awakened and cultivated by the education 
he received, went to prepare him, in no un- 
important degree, for the high duties which 
ultimately devolved upon him ; and to this 
education may safely be attributed much of 
that superiority of personal and mental cha- 
racter over the men with whom he had to 
deal, which Moses never fails to exhibit. It 
may safely be said that no man among the 
Hebrews was, or could be, so well fitted as 
he was for the arduous task of forming into 
a nation a body so disorganised and so de- 
pressed in mind and character by long ser- 
vitude. 

As Moses grew up he was well acquainted 
with the remarkable history of his own 
birth and preservation, and with the history 
of his people. He could not be ignorant of 
the future prospects of the race to which he 
belonged; and he must have known that 
their bondage in Egypt was limited to a 
certain number of years, the term of which 
might seem to be at no great distance. The 
objects and views of the Egyptians in their 
oppression of the Israelites could not but be 
intimately known to him; and Stephen, 
speaking on the authority of old traditions t, 
seems to intimate that the high hope of 
becoming their deliverer was not a stranger 
to his heart. Indeed, what we see so clearly, 
could not be entirely hidden from himself, — 
that, if they were to be delivered, there was 

* • Egvpt and Thebes,' xii. f Acts 23 —25. 



THK BONDAGE. 



110 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book II. i 



no man who, from his peculiar position and 
attainments, seemed so obviously designed 
and prepared by Providence to act in their 
behalf. He was forty years of age, when 
circumstances compelled him to take his 
course as a Hebrew or as an Egyptian. If, 
as we have suggested, his Egyptian bene- 
factress had just then with her husband 
ascended the throne, it may easily be sup- 
posed that this event could not but have 
some effect on his position. They possibly 
felt that they could no longer, in their 
public station, and with a view to the con- 
dition of the Israelites in that country, con- 
tinue to him their conspicuous favour and 
support as a Hebrew; and may, therefore, 
have required that he should submit to a 
formal act of naturalization and adoption to 
constitute him legally an Egyptian. To 
this there were, in his place, the highest 
temptations of honour and grandeur which 
could well be offered. But Moses heeded 
them not. He took his part with the de- 
spised and afflicted bondsmen. He " refused 
to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; 
choosing rather to suffer affliction with the 
people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of 
sin for a season."* 

After this refusal, the court was no longer 
a place for him. And it then entered his 
mind to go among the Hebrews t ; seemingly, 
that he might make himself personally 
acquainted with their condition, and observe 
whether there was spirit enough left in them 
to hail the hope of deliverance, and make an 
effort to realize it. Grievous were the sights 
he saw. The degradation of the blessed 
seed of Abraham, his brethren, filled his 
patriotic heart with grief ; while the oppressive 
conduct of paltry officials, who were set over 
their burdens, roused him to indignation. 
These feelings moved him, in one instance, 
to a deed which determined his future course. 
Going forth one day, he saw a Hebrew 
atrociously maltreated by an Egyptian officer, 
and, kindling at the sight, he interposed, 
and delivered the Israelite, by slaying his 
oppressor. Knowing the consequences of a 
discovery, he hid the body in the sand ; and 



since no Egyptian had witnessed the deed, 
he concluded that the secret was safe, and 
that no danger need be apprehended. Hebrews 
had seen it, but they could not betray him ; 
nay, rather, it seemed likely that so decisive 
and bold an act, which put him entirely in 
their power, and evinced his hatred of their 
oppression, would suffice to manifest to them 
that, although hitherto brought up with, 
and living among the great ones of Egypt, 
he was now ready to take his stand, decisively, 
with them, and for them. It was, if they so 
pleased to regard it, the first and kindling 
act of a revolt against their tyrants, and 
which, when they understood that he had 
laid aside his greatness in Egypt for their 
sakes, was likely, had they but spirit, to 
draw their attention to him as the man by 
whose hand God might deliver Israel J. But 
they had no spirit: they understood him 
not. Oppression had already done its work ; 
and of nothing were they so much afraid as 
of any circumstance which might involve 
the displeasure of their masters : and so that 
they " did eat meat to the full," blows were 
easy to bear, during their times of service, 
and labour light. There was also a want 
among them of that sympathy of the part 
for the whole, which is another natural con- 
sequence of an enslaved condition. The 
individuals who were, from time to time, 
maltreated, groaned, indeed: their bodies 
groaned, but not their souls. And the others 
who beheld it, were only glad it was not 
their case; and when, in turn, it became 
their case, endured it, looking forward to 
their time of holiday in Goshen. Moses 
himself was, perhaps, the only man of their 
race who felt an enlarged sympathy for the 
general body of the Hebrew people. This 
representation of their case and character is 
fairly deduced from the various facts, occur- 
ring at different times, which bear upon it ; 
and the statement of it now will enable 
their occasional acts and sentiments, both in 
Egypt and afterwards in the desert, to be 
better understood. 

Moses had soon occasion to see something 
of this. The day after that in which he had 



* Hebrews xi. 24, 25. 



f Aetsvii. 23. 



% Acts vLL 85. 



CHAP. II.] 



THE BOiVDAliE. 



Ill 



slain the Egyptian, he walked forth again, 
and observing two of the Hebrews striving 
together, he kindly and gently interposed to 
reconcile them, saying, " Sirs, ye are brethren : 
why do ye wrong one to another?" On 
which the one who was the most in the 
wrong thrust him away, sharply answering, 
" Who made thee a ruler and a judge over 
us? Wilt thou kill me, as thou didst the 
Egyptian yesterday 1 " This was enough to 
satisfy Moses of their general state of feeling, 
while it assured him that the manifestation 
of his own disposition to act for them against 
the Egyptians, and between them to produce 
union among themselves, was received with 
dislike and apprehension, rather than with 
gratitude and confidence. It is, moreover, 
likely that this disclosure had taken place 
in the presence of some Egyptians ; and, on 
all accounts, it was full time for him to look 
to his own safety. Moses was now, probably, 
under the displeasure of the court; and if 
he were still in some favour, he knew that 
the sovereign could not, with any show of 
decency, interfere to save a Hebrew from 
the consequences of slaying an Egyptian — 
and that, too, under circumstances which 
offered to the Hebrews an example of insub- 
ordination, and was calculated to rouse them 
to revolt. To understand the full extent of 
his danger, it should be recollected that the 
Egyptian laws against those who deprived a 
man of life were inexorably severe. To slay 
even a foreign slave was a crime punished 
with death. How much rather, then, when 
a freeman was slaughtered ; and how much 
more, still, when an Egyptian was slain by 
one of a foreign race. So far, indeed, were 
their ideas in this matter carried, that, to be 
an accidental witness of an attempt to 
murder, without endeavouring to prevent it, 
was a capital offence, which could only be 
palliated by bringing proofs of inability to 
act*. Aware, therefore, of the effects of 
such a disclosure as that which had been 
made, flight was the only alternative now 
open to him who had refused to be called 
the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He fled. It 
was well that he fled so soon : for the death 
of the Egyptian by his hand having transpired, 

* Diodorus Siculus, i. 6. 



it soon reached the ears of the king, and was 
probably related to him with every circum- 
stance of aggravation by the jealous courtiers, 
who may be supposed to have been glad of 
this opportunity of completing his ruin. 
The effect was that the king resolved not to 
screen him from punishment, but gave 
orders for his apprehension. 

But Moses was already beyond the reach 
of pursuit. He journeyed eastward upwards 
of two hundred and fifty miles, and only 
began to deem himself safe when the deserts 
of Arabia Petraea and both the arms of the 
Red Sea were between him and the Nile. In 
the country of Midian, on the remote border 
of the eastern gulf, the travel-worn and 
thirsty fugitive sat down, one day, beside a 
well of water, for refreshment and for rest. 
Here he met with an adventure very similar 
to that of Jacob in Padan-Aram. Water 
was scarce in that region, and the well by 
which Moses sat seems to have been the 
common property of the people in that 
neighbourhood. While he was there, the 
daughters of Jethro, the sheikh of a Midianite 
clan, came to give water to their father's 
flocks. They were busy in drawing water 
and discharging it into the troughs for the 
cattle to drink, when the shepherds of other 
flocks came also to the well, and rudely 
thrust away the women to serve their own 
cattle first. Moses, as might be expected 
from him, flew to their relief, and not only 
drove back the churlish shepherds, but 
watered the flocks of the damsels for them. 
This led to his introduction to the hospitali- 
ties of the family to which they belonged ; 
and, in the end, he consented to remain 
with them, and undertake the charge of the 
flocks, which he could lead far off, to greener 
pastures and more abundant waters than 
could be supplied by the immediate neigh- 
bourhood to which the female shepherds 
were confined. Moses could not be long 
among them without manifesting the supe- 
riority of his character and knowledge ; and 
so much were the family to which he was 
now attached pleased with him, that Zip- 
porah, one of the daughters, was given to 
him in marriage ; and by her he had, in the 
course of time, two sons, the eldest of whom 



112 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK It 



he called Gershom*, and the youngest 
Eliezerf. 

Here he remained forty years, forgotten, 
probably, by both Hebrews and Egyptians, 
or remembered only as a tradition ; and 
himself but little heedful now of what he 
had been, or of the high designs which had 
passed through his mind ; and brought up, 
as he had been, amidst the throng of cities 
and the pomp of courts, we may easily believe 
that the solitary deserts and unfrequented 
Tales, to which he now was wont to lead his 
flocks, had charms for him, by contrast, 
which he would not willingly have relin- 
quished to return to the scenes and circum- 
stances of his earlier life. That splendid 
dream offered many points for that medita- 
tion for which he had ample leisure: and 
the various knowledge which his education 
had supplied gave him ample materials for 
thought. "With the history of his fathers, 
the patriarchs, whose manner of life was like 
his own, he was well acquainted ; and when 
his mind turned to the condition of their 
offspring in Egypt, he could not but feel 
that the day of their deliverance approached, 
and looked forth to see from what quarter it 
might come. But, personally, he had nothing 
to do with it. They had rejected and 
betrayed him; and he knew them to be 
incapable of any exertion to free themselves. 
Doubtless, God would free them; but after 
what manner and with what instruments 
God might work, he knew not. Besides, 
forty years had made some change in his 
character, as it does make in the character 
of all men. " During his long exile, Moses 
was trained in the school of adversity for 
that arduous mission which he had prema- 
turely anticipated; and, instead of that 
flaming zeal which, at first actuated him, he 
at length became * very meek, above all the 
men that were upon the face of the earth.' 
(Num. xii. 3.) And no man, indeed, had 
greater trials or more occasion for meekness, 
and his humility was equal thereto. His 
backwardness afterwards to undertake that 

* Gershom means, " a stranger here; because," said 
Moses, " I am a stranger in a foreign land." 

j This name means, God my help; "because," he said, 
" the God of my father hath helped me, and delivered me 
from the sword of Pharaoh." 



mission to which he was destined from the 
womb, was no less remarkable than his for- 
wardness before." X 

We will now note what happened during 
these forty years in Egypt. 

The prince, Thothmes I., at the beginning 
of whose reign Moses fled from Egypt, reigned 
twenty-seven years. " Some buildings of his 
time still exist ; but the second of that name 
has left little to mark the history of his 
reign. Between these two monarchs appears 
to have intervened a queen (whom Mr. "Wil- 
kinson calls), Amun-neit-gori, and who has 
hitherto given rise to more doubts and 
questions than any other sovereign of this 
dynasty. But whether she was only regent 
during the reign of Thothmes II. and III., 
or succeeded to the throne in right of 
Thothmes L§, in w r hose honour she erected 
several monuments, is still uncertain, and 
some have doubted her being a queen. The 
name has been generally erased, and those 
of the second and third Thothmes are placed 
over it ; but sufficient remains to prove that 
the small temple of Medeenet Haboo, the 
elegant edifice under the Qoorueh rocks, and 
the great obelisks of Karnak, with many 
other handsome monuments, were erected by 
her orders, and the attention paid to the 
military caste is testified by the subjects of 
the sculptures." || 

Leaving this princess, and the question 
how and in what character she operated in 
the reigns of Thothmes II. and III., we may 
proceed to state that the reign of the first of 
these princes lasted ten years, and that, con- 
sequently, the fortieth year from the flight 
of Moses fell in the reign of his successor, 
Thothmes III., who is, therefore, to be 
regarded as the Pharaoh so celebrated in 
the history of Israel's deliverance. That 
deliverance is placed by Mr. Wilkinson in 

i Hales, ii. 184. 

§ We have ourselves already hazarded it as the most 
probable conjecture, that she was the daughter of Thoth- 
mes I. and Amense, and that, as in the previous case, her 
husband ascended the throne with her under the name of 
Thothmes II,; the succeeding monarch, Thothmes III., 
would then appear to have been their son,— which fact 
would account for the appearance of her name in his reign 
aUo. We can see no explanation which seems so fully to 
agree with circumstances a; this. 

1 1 Ancient Egyptians,' i. .5.'. 



• CHAP. II.] THE BO; 

the fourth year of his reign. Until towards 
the end of these forty years, the condition of 
:he Hebrews seems to have remained much 
as it had been before Moses left. That it 

| had not grown worse, and was such as we 
hare represented it, appears to be shown 

| from the fact that the Ephraimites were in 
a condition to undertake that expedition 
against the Philistines which proved so 
disastrous for them, and to which we have 
already alluded*. But Thothmes III. appears 
from the sculptures to have been an enter- 
prising prince both in the arts of war and 
peace. He was a great improver and builder; 
— a character which could not but operate 
unfavourably for the Hebrews by creating a 
great demand for labour. It may seem, 
indeed, to have been a sort of rule that the 
best kings for the Egyptians were the worst 
for the Hebrews. Heavier exactions upon 
their services appear to have been made: 
the tasks required from them were more 
onerous ; and the alternating periods of rest 
allowed to the several gangs of workmen 
were probably abridged, if they did not 
entirely cease. Never was their bondage so 
bitter — their affliction so heavy as now. 
Their lot became too hard even for their 
tried patience to bear any longer. But none 
of their chiefs seemed disposed to risk the 
consequences of moving for the deliverance 
of Israel; and in themselves they found no 
help. "What then could they do? They 
bethought them of crying to God, — to the 
God whose promises to their fathers offered 
a large inheritance of hope. They did cry ; 
and God heard them. 

At this time Moses had led his flocks 
round the eastern arm of the Red Sea into 

I the peninsula of Sinai, and penetrated to the 
green and well-watered valleys which are 

i involved among the mountains of its central 

i region. He was near the mountain of 

• Horeb, when he beheld before him a thorn- 

• bush on fire, a circumstance not in itself 
I unusual in that region : but the wonder was 
! that the bush continued to burn without 

being consumed, and without any subsidence 
of the flame. Moses advanced to view this 
strange sight more closely ; but, as he drew 
* Page 101. 



5fDAGE. 113 

nigh, he heard a voice, from the midst of 
the burning bush, calling him by his name. 
Astonished, he answered, " Here am I." 
Then the voice cried, " Draw not nigh 
hither : put off thy shoes from off thy feet, 
for the place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground." The baring of the feet, thus 
required, was a mark of respect, common to 
all oriental nations. The voice then said, 
" I am the God of thy fathers, the God of 
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob." Then Moses hid his face in his 
robe ; for he was afraid to look at God : and 
thus, barefooted and with veiled face, he 
stood to receive the Divine commands. The 
voice now said, " I have surely seen the 
affliction of my people wmich are in Egypt, 
and have heard their cry by reason of their 
task-masters ; for I know their sorrows ; and 
I am come down to deliver them out of the 
hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them 
up out of that land unto a good land and a 
large, unto a land flowing with milk and 

honey Behold, the cry of the children 

of Israel is come unto me ; and I have also 
seen the oppressions with which the Egyptians 
oppress them: come, now, therefore, and I 
will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou 
mayest bring forth my people, the children 
of Israel, out of Egypt." 

Moses heard this announcement, as re- 
garded himself, with surprised and unwilling 
ears. " Who am I" said he, " that / should 
go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring 
forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" 
He bowed to the sufficiency of the answer — 
" / will be with thee;" but still was most 
reluctant to undertake an enterprise, the 
difficulties of which were well known to him. 
Great as 'the difficulty was of dealing with 
the Egyptians in such a case, that, to a man 
of his knowledge, appeared so much less 
arduous than the task of securing the con- 
fidence and support of the Israelites them- 
selves — slaves in heart, as he knew them to 
be — and of making them true to their own 
cause, that the other was quite lost and 
forgotten in it. Even after he had been 
told how he was to proceed ; — that he was, 
on his arrival in Egypt, to assemble the 
elders of Israel, and announce his mission to 



i 



114 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book II. 



them, with the assurance that they would 
believe him — his mind still dwelt on this 
most serious point. "Behold," he said, 
" they will not believe me, nor hearken unto 
my voice : for they will say, Jehovah hath 
not appeared unto thee." Then, to give him 
the confidence he so much wanted, as well 
as to enable him to vouch to the Israelites 
his divine commission, the Lord empowered 
him to work three signal wonders — the first, 
of turning his rod into a serpent, and of 
restoring it again; the second, of making 
his hand leprous as snow, when he first drew 
it forth from his bosom, and of restoring it 
again, when he next drew it out; and the 
third, of turning water taken from the river 
Nile into blood. 

He was also instructed how he was to act 
with the Egyptians; but, as his proceedings 
were in strict conformity with those instruc- 
tions, they will presently come before us in 
another shape. But Moses was now eighty 
years of age ; — and, although this was pro- 
bably not more than equivalent to the age 
of sixty years in our own days, the fire of 
his youth had subsided ; and, accustomed as 
he had been for forty years to a quiet and 
solitary life, he felt sincerely reluctant to 
embark anew in scenes of trouble and diffi- 
culty, by undertaking the high but arduous 
emprise now imposed upon him. The self- 
confidence of his earlier life had also passed 
away ; and he was deeply sensible of his own 
inadequacy to meet the requirements of such 
a task. This he ventured to intimate, 
dwelling particularly on the fact that he 
was not an eloquent man, and that his slow 
and impeded utterance would divest all his 
statements of any weight which they might 
otherwise claim. Even the answer, " I will 
be with thy mouth, and teach thee what 
thou shalt say," did not satisfy one who so 



anxiously desired to be excused ; and, with- 
out making any more objections, which he 
found so well answered, he distinctly begged 
that the Lord would be pleased to transfer 
his choice to some one more competent than 
himself for such high service. But the 
divine purpose was not thus to be moved. 
He was told that his brother Aaron, who 
possessed all that eloquence which he deemed 
so necessary, would come forth to meet him 
as he approached Egypt, and would be most 
glad to see him once more ; he could act as 
the spokesman of his brother, who, through 
him, could deliver, with all due solemnity, 
the messages with which he might be 
charged. 

Moses no longer withstood the divine 
appointment. His hesitation and resistance 
had been that of a man who was but too 
well aware of the heavy duties of the high 
office to which he was called, and who knew 
that they must be discharged, and was 
determined to discharge them. So, hence- 
forth, we hear no more of doubt or difficulty. 
The youth of his mind was renewed; and, 
from that day to the last of his protracted 
life, all its powerful energies were devoted 
to the deliverance and welfare of Israel. 

Now Moses departed from " the mount of 
God," and returned to Jethro. He made 
him not acquainted with his high mission, 
but requested— " Let me go, I pray thee, 
and return unto my brethren which are in 
Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive." 
Jethro answered, " Go in peace." But, before 
Moses went, it pleased God to relieve him 
from any apprehensions of personal danger 
from the cause which had occasioned his 
flight from Egypt, by conveying to him the 
assurance that all those w r ere dead who had 
sought his life. 



CHAP. III.] 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



115 



CHAPTER III. 
THE DELIVEKANCE. 



Charged with the highest and most arduous 
mission ever confided to a mortal, Moses de- 
parted from the shores of the Red Sea to 
return to the banks of the Nile. His wife 
and two sons were with him, riding upon 
asses. But at the caravanserai, on the way, 
Moses was threatened with death because he 
had left his youngest son uncircumcised ; 
and Zipporah, understanding this, and per- 
ceiving that her husband was so smitten as 
to be unable himself to execute the act of 
obedience, took a sharp flint, and herself 
performed the operation. She, was, how- 
ever, so much annoyed by this occurrence, 
that she returned with her two sons to her 
father. 

As the future Deliverer advanced towards 
Egypt, Aaron received the divine command 
to go forth and meet his brother in the 
wilderness. They met, and embraced each 
other; after which Moses made Aaron 
acquainted with all that had happened to 
him, and the commission which he had 
received. They then proceeded together to 
the land of Goshen. 

It appears that the patriarchal govern- 
ment still subsisted among the Hebrews, not 
having been interfered with, or, certainly, 
not destroyed by the Egyptians. Under this 
form of government, the chief authority — 
such as a father exercises over his grown 
children — was vested in the heads of tribes, 
and, subordinately, in the heads of clans, or 
collections of families. As these were gene- 
rally men well advanced in years, they are 
called collectively "elders" in the Scriptural 
history. On arriving in Egypt these elders 
were assembled, and the eloquent Aaron 
declared to them what he had heard from 
his brother, and the errand on which he was 
now come. They concluded by displaying 
the marvels which Moses had been authorized 
to work. The people, who, as we have seen, 
j had already been brought to look to the 
Lord for their deliverance, recognised in this 



the answer to their supplications. " They 
believed : and when they heard that the 
Lord had visited the children of Israel, and 
that he had looked upon their affliction, they 
bowed their heads and worshipped." 

Moses and Aaron then proceeded to follow, 
to the letter, the instructions which had been 
given in the mount. 

They went to the court of Pharaoh, and 
were probably attended by the more influ- 
ential of the elders, although we only read 
that the two brothers entered the presence. 
It also appears that the mission produced so 
much excitement among the Hebrews, that 
many of those engaged in labour left their 
work to watch the result. 

On appearing before the king, Aaron 
announced that Jehovah, the God of the 
Hebrews, had appeared to them, and had 
sent them to require the king to allow the 
Israelites to go into the wilderness, to hold 
a feast to Him there. Pharaoh was doubtless 
astonished to receive this demand. He re- 
plied, " Who is Jehovah, that I should obey 
his voice to let Israel go? I know not 
Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go." But 
the brothers still insisted on their demand, 
explaining, more particularly, that they 
wished the people to go three days' journey 
into the wilderness, there to offer sacrifices 
to their God; and intimated that the 
Israelites might expect to be visited by 
" the pestilence or the sword," unless they 
were obedient, which, reflectively, hinted to 
the king himself that he might expect to 
be punished if he prevented their obedience. 
To this the king deigned no answer, but dis- 
missed them with a severe reprimand for 
putting such wild notions into the heads of 
the people, and calling away their attention 
from their work, to which they were all 
commanded to return. 

That same day, the king, affecting to 
attribute this application to the too idle 
life which the Hebrews were allowed to 



I 2 



116 

lead, determined to bring down the rising 
spiiit by making their burdens heavier upon 
them. " Let there be more work laid upon 
the men," he said, " that they may labour 
therein; and let them not regard vain 
words." 

Hitherto, those who laboured in the brick- 
fields had been furnished with all the materials 
for their work, not only the clay with which 
the bricks were formed, but the straw with 
which they were compacted ; but now it was 
ordered that they should no longer be fur- 
nished with straw, but should collect it for 
themselves, while the same number of bricks 
should be exacted which they had formerly 
been required to supply. This was a grievous 
alteration; seeing that much of the time 
which should have been employed in making 
the bricks was now consumed in seeking for 
straw. And this burden must have become 
more heavy every day, in proportion as the 
straw thus hunted up became scarce in the 
neighbourhood of the brick-fields. It be- 
came at last necessary to employ stubble 
instead of straw. This was a common 
enough resource when straw could not be 
easily procured; and old sun-dried bricks, 
compacted with stubble instead of straw, are 
at this day found not only in Egypt but in 
Babylonia. Under all these circumstances 
the work could not be done — the required 
tale of bricks could not be given in to the 
taskmasters. 

It appears that under the Egyptian task- 
masters there were Hebrew "officers" in 
charge of each gang of labourers, and who 
were personally accountable for the work 
which the gang had to perform — the task- 
masters themselves being responsible to the 
government for the work of larger bodies of 
Hebrew bondsmen. Yet the Hebrew officers 
I had access to Pharaoh as well as the Egyptian 
i taskmasters, and when he issued any orders 
respecting the "burdens" of the Israelites, 
it was his custom to send for both. Never- 
theless, the taskmasters finding the required 
number of bricks was not produced, ordered 
the Hebrew officers to be beaten, asking the 
while, " Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your 
task in making brick, both yesterday and 
to-dav. as heretofore ? " The ancient sculp- 



[book ii. 

tures and paintings seem to convey the 
intimation that Egypt was as much governed 
by the stick, in ancient times, as Persia or 
China is now, and the manner of its appli- 
cation appears also to have been similar. 
That the Hebrew overseers should be beaten 
was quite natural under such circumstances. 
They knew that the Egyptian taskmasters 
could afford them no relief, if they had been 
so minded ; and they therefore repaired in a 
body to the king himself, to make their 
troubles known. They complained of the 
impossible tasks now imposed ; and of being 
beaten for deficiencies which they could not 
possibly prevent. But the king was inex- 
orable; and, as we imagine, with a design 
to turn the Hebrew people from their new 
objects, and to alienate their minds from 
Moses, he took heed to remind them of the 
cause of their increased burdens, saying, " Ye 
are idle, ye are idle : therefore ye say, Let us 
go and do sacrifice to Jehovah." If his object 
were such, he succeeded very completely. 
As they left the king, they met Moses and 
Aaron; and began charging them as those 
who were the authors of all the calamities 
they suffered. Moses did not deem it 
advisable to make any answer to them; but 
to God he represented, with great sorrow, 
how much otherwise than improved the 
condition of Israel had been made by the 
steps which had been taken. In reply, the 
Lord renewed his promises of protection and 
deliverance in the strongest and most en- 
couraging terms ; and intimated that, since 
they now saw the inadequacy of merely 
human means, or of their own resources, to 
effect this great deliverance, and that the 
Egyptians would only through compulsion 
let them go ; they should now see with how 
"a stretched-out arm," and with what 
" great judgments," He would bring them 
forth from under the burdens of their 
oppressors. 

Moses repeated all this to the Hebrews. 
But, "for anguish of spirit, and for cruel 
bondage," they heeded him not. In the 
first instance they had been willing enough 
to be delivered — they had sighed for de- 
liverance — but then it must be deliverance 
by miracle, not through any exertion or 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. III. J 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



117 



any suffering of theirs. They were poor 
spiritless slaves, as Moses had found them 
forty years before; and now their chief 
concern was about having offended the 
Egyptians, and made their own position 
worse, through having given their sanction 
to the proceedings of Moses. And so de- 
pressed were they in character and heart, 
that they shrunk from the degree of exertion 
arjd enterprise which must necessarily attend 
so great an operation, and began to think 
that their present condition — even the con- 
I dition of bondage, but with safety and with 
sufficient food — might be better than that 
which was offered to them. They said, 
"Let us alone, that we may serve the 
Egyptians; for it is better for us to serve 
the Egyptians than to die in the wilder- 
ness."* 

This confirmed the fears which the previous 
experience of Moses had led him to enter- 
tain ; and the result was so discouraging to 
him, that when directed to appear again 
before the king, and to renew the demand 
which had been followed by such disastrous 
consequences, he ventured to propose the 
very natural objection that since even his 
own people would not attend to him, how 
could he expect that the king of Egypt 
would hearken to him — the rather since he 
was destitute of the advantages of an elo- 
quent or ready utterance ? He went, how- 
ever, after having been reminded that his 
brother Aaron, who possessed these qualities 
in a very eminent degree, had been given to 
him for a spokesman. At this second inter- 
view, the king, as had been foretold, 
demanded of them whether they could not 
show some sign or wonder — some miracle — ■ 
in proof of their commission. On which 
Aaron threw down his staff upon the ground, 
where it became a serpent before them all. 
This gave occasion to perhaps the most 
extraordinary contest on record. The strange 
God of the Hebrews required Pharaoh to let 
the Israelites depart; while the priests of 
his own gods — who doubtless had their 

* This answer is preserved in the Samaritan, but not in 
our present Hebrew Bibles and the translations from it. 
That it was given, however, appears from a retrospective 
reference to it in Exod. xiv. 12. 



share of profitable interest in the labours 
of the bondsmen — insisted that this could 
not be allowed, especially as the assigned 
reason for the journey was to perform a 
service for which they would have been 
stoned if it were performed in Egypt. 
Under these circumstances, the king con- 
cluded that unless this strange God, of 
whom Moses and Aaron spoke, and from 
whom they professed to derive miraculous 
powers, were able to give them the power of 
working greater marvels than could be 
effected by his own priests and magicians, 
who professed to derive their powers from 
the gods of Egypt, he should be justified in 
paying no attention to a demand, just in 
itself, but suspicious and dangerous as 
viewed through the policy which the Egyp- 
tian government had followed. This contest 
was not provoked or sought by Moses and 
Aaron: it resulted from, or rather was 
imposed upon, their acts by the king; for 
whenever a wonder was wrought, Pharaoh 
set his " wise men " to do the like. If, by 
illusion, they succeeded in producing the 
same appearance, the king was satisfied — 
his heart was hardened in the course he was 
pursuing : but if they failed, then his heart 
was hardened still. Or it may be that the 
magicians of Egypt, who wrought such 
seeming wonders " by their enchantments," 
did so by the profession of superior and 
deep arts, rather than by the pretension to 
immediate empowerment from the gods: 
and if so, the neutralizing effect on the 
miracles wrought by Moses would be equal 
or greater, inasmuch as it might then be 
pretended that his wonders, like theirs, were 
wrought through his being "learned in all 
the wisdom of the Egyptians." Perhaps it 
was partly to preclude such a notion that 
most of the wonders were wrought, not by 
the hand of Moses himself, but by his 
brother Aaron, who had not, like him, 
received an Egyptian education. 

These things having occurred to the 
king, he sent for "the wise men and 
sorcerers of Egypt." They, by their arts, 
performed the same marvel, or, at least, 
appeared to do so. They threw down their 
staves, of which every one became a serpent. 



118 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



It is not necessary to suppose that any- 
supernatural influence was exerted, or that 
any real transformation took place. We 
may mention generally, that by their tran- 
scendent art and their superior acquaintance 
with the properties of matter, the Egyptian 
priesthood excelled all the ancients in the 
production of those effects and illusions 
which were inseparably and essentially 
connected with every system of Pagan 
worship ; and by which the well-instructed 
priests were enabled to beguile and hold in 
bondage the minds and senses of the ignorant 
multitudes. While this may account gene- 
rally for the surprising imitations by the 
Egyptian "wise men" (who were, unques- 
tionably, members of the priesthood) of 
the miracles wrought by the hands of Moses 
and Aaron; their present feat seems par- 
ticularly easy of explanation when we 
recollect that ancient Egypt was, as modern 
Egypt now is, very famous for its serpent- 
charmers. These personages can and do 
perform operations with and upon serpents, 
which still seem prodigious to the unin- 
structed and almost to instructed minds. At 
their command their well-trained serpents 
will seem to sleep, or to become torpid and 
lie as if dead : they will come at the call of 
the " charmer," who without fear will keep 
them hid in the folds of his garment, or 
allow them to twine around his neck. They 
are also skilful jugglers, and able with great 
address to substitute one object for another*. 
Such men might, without much difficulty, 
do that which the "wise men" of Pharaoh 
did ; but by which of their many tricks it 
was effected it is not needful to inquire. 
They might have brought live serpents, and 
adroitly substituted them for their staves. 
And although Aaron's serpent swallowed up 
the other serpents, showing the superiority 
of the true miracle over the false, it might, 
as Dr. Hales remarks t, only lead the king 
to conclude that Moses and Aaron were 
more expert jugglers than Jannes and 
Jambres, who, as St. Paul informs us$ from 



* M. Dubois-Ayme\ « Notice sur le Sejour des Hebreux 
en Egypte, in « Descript. de l'Egypte,' viii. 108. Salgues, 
' Des Erreurs et des Prejug<5s repandus dans la Soci<ke7 u. 
255. ... „ 

1 « Analysis,* ii. 167. * 2 Tim - m " 8 



Jewish traditions, were the chief of their 
opponents. This miracle was therefore 
abortive, with regard to its effect upon the 
king; and, as the same excellent writer 
observes, "his incredulity only resembled 
the incredulity of the Israelites themselves, 
when the same miracle was wrought before 
them ; and it was not considered as decisive 
even by the Lord, when he supposed they 
might not be convinced until the third 
miraculous sign, as was actually the case§. 
In both cases, therefore, the reality of the 
transformation might be doubted by Pharaoh 
as well as by the Israelites, on the suppo- 
sition that it might have been the effect of 
legerdemain." 

After this commenced the famous plagues, 
growing more awful and tremendous in their 
progress, whereby God designed to make 
Pharaoh know that which he confessedly 
knew not— that the God of the Hebrews 
was the Supreme Lord ; to give evidence to 
the world of his power and justice ; and so to 
exercise judgment upon the Egyptians for 
their oppression of Israel, that the very 
gods they feared and the elements they 
worshipped were made the instruments of 
distress and ruin to them 

As it is of some importance to understand 
the time of the year in which these plagues 
occurred, it may be well to adduce the fol- 
lowing statement on the subject from Dr. 
Hales. It is the most satisfactory we have 
met with. 

"The season of the year, and the com- 
mencement of the plagues, is nowhere 
specified, but both may be collected from 
the history. The exode of the Israelites, 
after the tenth and last plague, was about 
the vernal equinox, or the beginning of 
April, on the fifteenth day of the first month, 
Abib (Exod. xii. 6); but by the seventh 
plague of hail, the larley was smitten ; but 
not the wheat and rye of later growth. For, 
according to the report of modern travellers, 
Heyman and Hasselquist, the barley harvest 
in Egypt is reaped in March, and the wheat 
in April ; and Le Brun found the whole to 
be over at Cairo upon the nineteenth of 
April. This agrees with the account of 

§ See Exod. iv. 8, 9, compared with iv. 30, 31. 



CRAP. III.] 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



119 



Moses, that 'the barley was in the ear,' 
though not yet fit for reaping; but 'the 
wheat and the rye were not grown up.'* 
This judgment, therefore, must have hap- 
pened about a month before the exode, or in 
the beginning of March, before the barley 
harvest, so early as to leave room for the 
three succeeding plagues ; and if we count 
backward two months, by the same analogy, 
for the six first plagues, it will bring the 
first about the beginning of January, or 
commencement of the winter season; at 
vhich time the river was lowest, and its 
waters clearest.'" + 

The river Nile was one of the chief gods 
of the Egyptians, and as such was honoured 
with feasts, and sacrifices, and rites of cere- 
monial worship. The king went forth one 
morning to its banks, perhaps to render 
some act of homage ; and was there met by 
Moses and Aaron, who, after repeating their 
demand, and being again refused, announced, 
in the name of Jehovah, the act they 
intended to perform — and the object — " In 
this thou shalt know that I am Jehovah." 
Then, in the presence of the king and his 
servants, the prophet lifted up his wondrous 
rod, and therewith smote the river ; and at 
once its holy and most wholesome waters 
were changed into blood, than which nothing 
could be more abhorrent to the Egyptians. 
All the waters of Egypt were derived from 
the Nile, and upon all these waters the 
change operated. Not only were all the 
numerous canals and reservoirs which were 
fed by the Nile, filled with this bloody water, 
but even that which had been preserved in 
vessels of wood and stone for domestic use. 
This last circumstance is particularly men- 
tioned in the sacred narrative, as if purposely 
to evince the miraculous nature of the trans- 
action; and has therefore been carefully 
overlooked by those who have sought to 
explain this and the other plagues by the 
operation of natural and (in Egypt) ordinary 
causes. This calamity continued for seven 
days, during which all the fish that were in 
the river died in the corrupted and nauseous 

* Exod. ix. 31 , 32. 

t 'Analysis, ii. 167, 168. 



waters. Many of these fish were worshipped 
by the Egyptians; and fish, generally, 
formed a large and principal article of diet 
to them. This was, therefore, a great and 
complicated calamity while it lasted. The 
Egyptians loathing now to drink that water 
which they prized beyond all things, and 
held to be more pleasant and salutary than 
any other which the earth could offer, began 
to dig the ground in the hope of finding 
pure water. They did find it ; and this gave 
the priests an opportunity of imitating the 
miracle on a small scale. Nothing could be 
more easy than by chemical means to give a 
blood-like appearance to the water of some 
of the wells thus formed, or to water taken 
from them. But this was enough to satisfy 
the easy conscience of Pharaoh ; and we are 
told that " neither did he set his heart to 
this also." 

When, therefore, according to their in- 
structions, Moses and Aaron again bore to 
Pharaoh the message, " Thus saith the Lord, 
Let my people go, that they may serve me," 
they were again refused. On which Aaron, 
under the direction of Moses, smote once 
more the river ; when, lo ! the sacred river, 
together with another of the Egyptian gods 
— the frog ! — was once more made the instru- 
ment of their punishment. Myriads of frogs 
came up from the river, and from all the 
canals and reservoirs which it fed, and 
overspread the land. No place was free 
from them — from the hut of the peasant to 
the palace of the king. Even though the 
frogs were a sacred creature, a people so 
scrupulously clean and nice as the Egyptians, 
must have been terribly annoyed to find that 
the unseemly reptiles penetrated to all 
places, polluting their choicest food and 
most costly furniture. They found them 
everywhere — in their ovens, in their knead- 
ing-troughs, and even in their couches and 
beds. 

This marvel also the Egyptian priests 
managed on some small scale to imitate ; 
but as they could do nothing to remove the 
nuisance, Pharaoh began to be somewhat 
troubled. He sent for Moses and Aaron, 
and begged them to entreat Jehovah to 
remove the frogs, in which case he would no 



120 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



longer refuse to let the Hebrews go to render 
Hira sacrifice. Accordingly, at the time 
appointed by himself, "the morrow," the 
frogs died away from the houses, the villages, 
and the fields, "and" they gathered them 
together upon heaps : and the land stank." 
But when the king saw there was respite, 
he again hardened his heart, and refused to 
let the people go, regardless of the promise 
he had made. 

Therefore Moses and Aaron were com- 
manded to smite the dust of the earth, from 
which instantly rose myriads of gnats*, or 
mosquitoes, an insect plague well known to 
Egypt during summer, but from which the 
country is free until nearly three months 
after the time at which this plague must 
have been inflicted. As these most insatiable 
and persevering insects form by far the 
greatest annoyance and distress — because 
the most unintermitting — to which life, in 
warm climates, is subject, the prospect of 
being exposed to it three months earlier than 
usual, and of being thus deprived of their 
usual season of relief, must have been almost 
maddening to the Egyptians — especially 
when the insects were produced in such mul- 
titudes as on this occasion. It seems sur- 
prising to find that the priests were unable 
to imitate this miracle; but, perhaps, the 
smallness of the object may, in some mea- 
sure, account for this, as it may have 
prevented that handling and management 
to which serpents and frogs were subject. 
However, this time they confessed that there 
was something in this beyond their art and 
power — that it was no human feat of leger- 
demain, but that they saw in it the finger of 
a god, or the supernatural agency of some 
demon. This was, indeed, the only excuse 
by which they could hope to cover their own 
failure; and the acknowledgment was of no 
immediate value, since it did not ascribe the 
power and the glory to Jehovah, the only 
true God. They were not themselves pre- 
vented by it from continuing to attempt 
their emulative wonders ; and the heart of 
the king remained unmollified. 

* See ' Pictorial Bible ; ' note on Exod. viii. 16, for the 
reason on which this interpretation, rather than that of 
" lice," is chosen. 



Hitherto, it appears, the plagues had been 
common to the Egyptians and the Hebrews. 
We can easily understand that the latter 
were included in these visitations, to punish 

I them for their participation in the idolatries 
of Egypt, and for their unbelief. But as this 

I may have contributed to prevent the 
Egyptians from seeing the finger of the God 
of the Hebrews in particular, in the cala- 
mities with which they had been visited, a 
distinction was henceforth made, and the 
land of Goshen was exempted from the 
plagues by which the rest of Egypt was 
desolated. 

The next plague, being the fourth, is of 
rather doubtful interpretation. The word 
by which it is described denotes a mixture, 
whence some suppose that it consisted of an 
immense number of beasts of prey, of various 
species, by which the land was overspread t. 
But it seems better to understand that even- 
kind of annoying insect is intended. In the 
preceding plague there was one species — now 
there are many. There are, however, reasons 
which might suggest that the Egyptian 
beetle is rather intended. It is not said 
that the priests even attempted to imitate 
this plague. But whether so or not, the 
annoyance was so great that Pharaoh sent 
for Moses and Aaron, and proposed a com- 
promise which had occurred to him — namely, 
that they should offer to Jehovah the sacri- 
fices about which they were so anxious in 
their own land of Goshen, without going 
away into the wilderness. But Moses, with 
great presence of mind and clear truth, re- 
plied, that the worship of Jehovah required 
the sacrifice of animals which the Egyptians 
worshipped, and never offered in sacrifice; 
and that the Egyptians would certainly rise 
upon the Hebrews and slay them if any 
attempt to offer such sacrifices were made in 
their presence. On these grounds he insisted 
that the Israelites should go three days' 
journey into the wilderness, as the Lord had 
commanded. The king saw the force of these 
reasons ; and while he gave a reluctant con- 
sent that they should go into the wilderness, 
he stipulated that they should not go very 

t See the Targum of Jonathan ; also Jarchi and Aben 
Ezra. 



CHAP. III.] 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



121 



far away. In this, and still more clearly in 
subsequent circumstances, the king indicates 
his suspicion of the truth — that, under this 
excuse, the real wish and intention was to 
ensure the opportunity of an unmolested 
march to such a distance as might afford the 
Hebrews an opportunity of making their 
escape altogether. It is well to be just even 
to Pharaoh, by thus intimating that the real 
question before him — as well understood by 
both parties — was not merely the ostensible 
matter, whether the Hebrews were to be 
allowed a week's holiday, to go and hold 
their feast in the desert — but, really, whether 
the useful and customary services of the 
Hebrews were henceforth to be dispensed 
with altogether, and a serious public loss and 
a great disturbance of existing relations be 
incurred. This was the Egyptian view of 
the question ; with the further circumstance 
that there seemed cause to apprehend that 
the Hebrews, if allowed to acquire an inde- 
pendent position, might ultimately resolve 
themselves into a very dangerous adverse 
power on the frontiers — whether in the 
desert as pastoral nomades, or as a settled 
people in Palestine. Viewing the matter 
thus, as the Egyptian king unquestionably 
did, we may cease to wonder that he 
" hardened his heart " so often. For we are 
firmly persuaded that there is not now any 
state having bondsmen, however acquired, 
which would consent to part with them, 
under such circumstances, with much more 
readiness than did the king of Egypt, or 
which would require much less urgent com- 
pulsions than those to which that monarch 
ultimately submitted. No doubt the He- 
brews had a right to be free, and no one 
could justly detain them in bondage; but, 
again, to illustrate the position of that 
monarch, let us recollect that he had not 
brought them into bondage. They had 
laboured for a century in the public service ; 
whence the king, or few Egyptians then 
living, had ever known them otherwise than 
as bondsmen ; and few, if any, Hebrews then 
living could remember the days when Israel 
was free. 

Moses expressed his readiness to intercede 
with Jehovah for the removal of this 



plague ; venturing to add the caution, " Let 
not Pharaoh deal deceitfully any more." But 
no sooner had this calamity passed, than the 
king, heedless of this admonition, and of his 
own word, continued his refusal to allow 
the departure of the Israelites. 

This second breach of faith brought down 
a judgment more deadly than any of those 
which had preceded. This was a grievous 
murrain, by which numbers of the different 
kinds of cattle kept by the Egyptians were 
slain, while no harm befell the flocks and 
herds of the Israelites in Goshen. This dis- 
tinction had been predicted to Pharaoh, and 
he sent to assure himself whether it bad 
taken place. Nevertheless, his heart still re- 
mained unsoftened, and he still refused to 
let Israel go. 

The infliction with which this obduracy 
was punished consisted of an ulcerous in- 
flammation, of the most painful and violent 
description, which broke forth not only upon 
man, but upon such of the cattle as the mur- 
rain had spared. As this ulcer appeared upon 
the scrupulously clean persons of the priestly 
"magicians," as well as upon others, their 
humiliation was so great that they slunk 
from the scene, thus relinquishing even that 
languid show of rivalry and opposition which 
they had lately manifested. This was the 
sixth plague. 

The seventh was introduced with unusual 
solemnity. Moses was charged to make the 
usual demand of the king — "Let my people 
go, that they may serve me ;" with the addi- 
tion, " For I will, at this time, send all my 
plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy 
servants, and upon thy people; that thou 
r maye$t know that there is none like me in all 
the earth." The king was further reminded 
that Jehovah could stretch forth his hand, 
and cut off him and all his people with pes- 
tilence: but he had been preserved, that, 
through these repeated exhibitions, the 
power of the God of the Hebrews might be 
evinced, and his name declared far and 
near. The visitation thus announced, and 
the time for it fixed, — " to-morrow, about this 
time," and which came on at the appointed 
time, when Moses lifted up his rod towards 
heaven, — consisted of such a storm of hail 



122 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book u» 



as had never before been known in Egypt, 
accompanied by terrible thunders, and by 
lightning " that ran along upon the ground." 
Seeing that rain is exceedingly rare, and hail 
almost unknown in Egypt, so formidable a 
hail-storm as this, predicted as it was, was 
one of the greatest marvels that could be 

I produced in such a climate as that of Egypt. 
A heavy fall of snow in July would not, in 
our own country, be so great a phenomenon 
as a heavy hail-storm at any time in Egypt. 
And this storm was so heavy, and the hail- 
stones of such prodigious size and weight, 
that it killed man and beast, broke the trees, 
and destroyed the standing crop of flax and 
barley ; the wheat and the rye escaped, as 
their condition of growth was less advanced. 
This has already been stated (p. 119). All 
these effects had been foretold ; and the pre- 
diction was mercifully coupled with the 
advice that those who believed, and feared 
the word of Jehovah, should place their 
servants and cattle under shelter before the 
appointed time arrived ; and the effect which 
had been produced upon the Egyptians is 

i shown by the fact that many of " Pharaoh's 
servants" did believe in what must have 
seemed so exceedingly unlikely, and caused 
their servants and cattle " to flee into the 
houses." There was no hail in the land of 
Goshen. 

This visitation was so dreadful that it 
made considerable impression upon the king, 
who sent hastily for Moses and Aaron, and 
plainly confessed, " I have sinned this time. 
Jehovah is righteous, and I and my people 
are wicked. Entreat Jehovah (for it is 
enough) that there be no more mighty 
thunderings and hail ; and I will let you go, 
and ye shall stay no longer." Perhaps he 
sincerely felt and intended this at the time ; 
but Moses, who knew his heart far better 
than it was known to himself, plainly inti- 
mated that he placed no reliance on this 
promise, although he engaged to obtain an 
immediate cessation of the storm. 

He was right in his anticipation ; for when 
the old demand was renewed, the king re- 
peated his refusal. Then the arrival of an 
army of locusts was announced, which should 
destroy every green thing that the hail had 



spared. In announcing this visitation, men- 
tion is made of one very important object of 
this series of wonders, in addition to those 
which have been already noticed ; this is, 
that the faith of the Israelites might be con- 
firmed — that they themselves might be con- 
vinced of the supreme and universal power 
of the God of their fathers,— " That thou 
mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy 
son's son, what things I have wrought in 
Egypt, and my signs which I have done 
anion g them ; that ye may know how that I 
am Jehovah." 

The threatened infliction seemed so appal- 
ling to those about the king, after the loss 
and ruin which the preceding plague had 
occasioned, that they ventured to remon- 
strate : — " Knowest thou not yet that Egypt 
is destroyed?" was the emphatic question 
which they connected with their advice that 
the Israelites should be allowed to depart, 
rather than that such ruinous inflictions 
should be brought upon the land. If his 
own courtiers and counsellers were of this 
opinion, the king could not but infer that, 
in the course he was pursuing, he was no 
longer supported by the general opinion of 
the Egyptian people, who now lamented his 
obstinacy, and had become desirous that, as 
the least of many evils, the claim of the 
Israelites should be granted. After so much 
time had passed, and so many calamities, one 
after another, had befallen the whole of the 
Egyptian people, we may easily understand 
that the whole attention of both nations was 
entirely engrossed in watching this great 
contest, and in speculating on its probable 
results. Probably all labour was intermitted, 
save that necessary for present subsistence ; 
and it is not to be imagined that the labour 
of the Israelites in the public service was 
now enforced. Released from their burdens, 
they unquestionably congregated in Goshen, 
where alone they could be exempt from the 
miseries which afflicted the Egyptians ; and 
where they would be in readiness as a con- 
gregated body, for the simultaneous move 
which was, on their part, the hoped result of 
the contest. They could not but have gra- 
dually acquired confidence in their God and 
in his prophet, as they thus sat watching the 



j CHAP. III.] 

progress of events, and witnessed the gather- 
ing dismay of the Egyptians. 

The king, perceiving the feeling which 
was entertained by his own people, sent to 
have Moses an 1 Aaron brought back ; and to 
make their ulterior intentions manifest, he 
asked, " Who are they that shall go 1 " and 
when Moses, in reply, said plainly that their 
wives, their children, their cattle, and all 
that they had, must go with them, the king 
was highly provoked, and upbraided them 
for their intentions, which, though pro- 
fessedly concealed under the show of holding 
a feast to the Lord, were transparently 
manifested, by this demand, to contemplate 
nothing less than an escape from Egypt 
altogether. He said that the original de- 
mand was that the men only should go, and 
to that he was now ready to agree ; but he 
would consent to nothing more. On which 
he commanded Moses and Aaron to be thrust 
from his presence. 

Then came the locusts. Taking for their 
appearance the very latest date which the 
history will allow, the arrival was so much 
earlier than usual, as to render it a circum- 
stance not to be expected in the ordinary 
course of events ; and besides this, it should 
be observed that, although locusts are com- 
mon in Arabia, they appear with comparative 
rarity in Egypt ; the Red Sea, forming a sort 
of barrier against them, as they are not 
formed for crossing seas, or for long flights. 
Yet, on the present occasion, the locusts were 
enabled, by the aid of a " strong east wind," 
to cross that sea from Arabia ; and this is 
another remarkable circumstance, as the 
winds which prevalently blow in Egypt are 
six months from the north, and six months 
from the south. To those whom reading or 
travel has made acquainted with the appear- 
ance and ravages of these destructive vermin, 
the notice which the Scriptural narrative 
here takes of them will seem remarkably 
striking and true : — " The locusts went up 
over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all 
the coasts of Egypt: Very grievous were 
they ; before them there were no such locusts 
as they, neither after them shall there be 
such. For they covered the face of the whole 
earth, so that the land was darkened; and 



123 

they did eat every green herb of the land, and 
all the fruit of the trees which the hail had 
left : and there remained not any green thing 
in the trees, or in the herbs of the fidd, through 
all the land of Egypt''' As we are told that 
the locusts ate up every green thing which 
the hail had spared, the young crop of wheat 
and rye must be included. This calamity 
was so very formidable, that Pharaoh de- 
layed not to send for Moses and Aaron. He 
avowed to them his fault, and begged for one 
reprieve more. He obtained it by means of 
a strong north-westerly wind, which in one 
night so completely swept the locusts away 
into the Red Sea, that not one could be 
found in all the land of Egypt. But when 
relief had thus been given, it appeared that 
the king would not allow the Hebrews to 
take their families and flocks, though he was 
still willing that the men should take the 
desired journey into the wilderness. 

Therefore a new and most extraordinary 
plague was brought upon the land. In this 
land, where even a cloud seldom throws an 
obscuration on the clear face of the heavens, 
there was for three days a thick darkness, — 
a darkness which, in the emphatic language . 
of Scripture, "might be felt," and which, we 
are told, prevented the people from seeing 
one another. Considering the rarity of any 
obscuration in the valley of the Nile, and 
that the sun was one of the chief of the gods 
the Egyptians worshipped, their consterna- 
tion may be partly imagined, and is strongly 
represented in the Scriptural narrative, by 
their total inaction — no one rose " from his 
place for three days." All this while the 
Israelites in the land of Goshen enjoyed the 
ordinary light of day. As we have no inti- 
mation of the agency employed in producing 
this remarkable darkness in Egypt, while 
the Hebrews had light in their dwellings, we 
must be content to leave this miracle in the 
characteristic obscurity in which, more than 
any of the others, it is involved*. 

This visitation, so well calculated to appal 
and terrify the Egyptians, compelled the 
king to relax his previous determination. 
He now declared himself willing to let the 

* Some considerations on the subject may be found in 
the * Pictorial Bible/ note on Exod. x. 21. 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



124 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book II. 



men and their families go, but he wished to 
keep the flocks and herds as security for 
their return. Moses represented that they 
were going for the express purpose of offering 
sacrifices to Jehovah, for which cattle would 
be necessary, and it could not be known till 
they arrived in the wilderness what number 
of cattle would be required. Therefore he 
declared in the most peremptory manner, 
" Our cattle also shall go with us ; there shall 
not an hoof be left behind?" 1 But the proud 
king was determined not to relinquish this 
last and only point of security which would 
remain to him. Moses, perceiving his obsti- 
nacy, proceeded to deliver his last and most 
awful message from Jehovah, which cannot 
be given in language more condensed or half 
so expressive as his own : — " Thus saith 
Jehovah ; About midnight will I go out into 
the midst of Egypt : and all the first-born in 
the land of Egypt shall die; from the first- 
born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, 
even unto the first-born of the maid-servant 
that is behind the mill ; and all the first-born 
of beasts. And there shall be a great cry 
I throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there 
was none like it, nor shall be like it any 
more. But against any of the children of 
Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, 
against man or beast : that ye may know how 
that Jehovah doth make a difference between 
the Egyptians and Israel. And all these thy 
servants [the councillors and nobles then 
present] shall come down unto me, and bow 
down themselves unto me, saying, ' Get thee 
out, and all the people that follow thee:' 
And after that I will go out." Such a 
message delivered in so high a tone did not 
fail to exasperate the haughty king, who 
exclaimed to Moses, in sentences rendered 
abrupt by passion, " Get thee from me, take 
heed to thyself, see my face no more : for in 
that day that thou seest my face thou shalt 
die." To which Moses, with most impressive 
solemnity, only answered, " Thou hast spoken 
well. I will see thy face again no more." 
He then went out from the presence of 
Pharaoh in great anger, and withdrew finally 
from the court to join his own people in the 
land of Goshen. 

His presence was necessary there to make 



the needful preparations for that departure 
which he now saw to be close at hand. And 
here it will be observed that the judgments 
exercised upon the Egyptians, with the 
manner in which their own affairs had been 
made of such absorbing importance, had, for 
the present, made the Israelites very tract- 
able, and disposed to receive and follow the 
directions of Moses with attention and re- 
spect. It also appears that, after what had 
passed, Moses was now held in great honour 
among the Egyptians themselves, and that 
not only by the mass of the people, but by 
the chiefs and nobles of the court *. This 
was natural. Probably they would have 
made a god of him, if he had been one of 
themselves and had acted with them or on 
their behalf. 

It had been usual with Moses to announce 
a plague only the day before it came ; but 
on this occasion four days elapsed, a circum- 
stance which may probably have lulled the 
fears which the king could not but have at 
first entertained from the awful threat of 
one whose words had not hitherto in any one 
instance fallen to the ground. 

Among the Hebrews in Goshen the most 
important circumstance of this time was 
the institution of the Passover. It was 
peculiar to this institution that it was 
founded to commemorate an event which 
had not yet occurred, and that so arranged 
that it was in the act of being celebrated for 
the first time, at the very instant when the 
event occurred which it was destined ever 
after to signalize. The institution, was 
therefore established with a prophetic refer- 
ence to a coming event — that event being 
the one of which Moses had spoken to 
Pharaoh — the destruction of the first-born 
of Egypt. 

More precisely, the Passover was ordained 
for a perpetual memorial of the deliverance 
of the Israelites from the destroying angel, 
when he passed over or spared the houses of 
the Israelites, but destroyed the first-born of 
the Egyptians. 

Each family had been previously required, 
at the beginning of the month A bib (which 
from henceforth was made the first month 

# Exod. xi. 3. 



I 

i CHAP. III.] 

j of the sacred year), to take a lamb without 
j spot or blemish upon the tenth day of the 
j month, to keep it up, and to kill it on the 
; fourteenth, between the tic o evenings*. They 
were to roast it entire, not breaking a bone 
of it, and to eat it in haste, with bitter herbs 
and unleavened bread, standing, with their 
loins girded, their sandals on their feet, and 
their staves in their hands, after the manner 
and posture of hurried pilgrims about to set 
forth instantly upon a long journey, through 
a dreary wilderness, towards a pleasant land 
where their toil and travel were to cease. 
And they were also required to sprinkle the 
blood of the paschal lamb, by means of a 
bunch of hyssop dipped therein, upon the 
lintel, or head-posts, and upon the two side- 
posts of the doors of their houses, to save 
them from the destroyer, who, seeing this 
token, would pass over their houses without 
entering to smite the first-born. When these 
instructions were delivered, " the people 
bowed the head and worshipped. And the 
children of Israel went away and did as 
Jehotah had commanded," and waited in 
their houses for the catastrophe which was 
to work their deliverance t. 

The tremendous night was not long delayed. 
While the Jews were celebrating this newly 
instituted feast — at midnight — the destroy- 
ing angel went forth in a pestilence, and 
smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, 
— " from the first-born of Pharaoh, that sat 
on his throne, unto the first-born of the cap- 
tive that was in the dungeon ; and all the 
first-born of cattle." And there was a great 
cry in Egypt — lamentation and bitter weep- 
ing — for there was not a house in which 
there was not one dead. 

The effect of this dreadful blow was ex- 
actly such as Moses had foretold. The king, 
his nobles, and the Egyptian people, rose in 
sorrow from their beds that night. The 
shrieks of the living, with the groans of 
those about to die, breaking in upon the 
stillness of the night — the darkness of which 
must greatly have aggravated the horror and 

* The former of which began at the ninth hour, and the 
latter at the twelfth, or sunset. 

t Exod. xii. The clear though very brief account of the 
institution which we ha^e given is, with slight alterations, 
from Hales, ii. lflO. 



125 

confusion of that hour — made the people 
fancy they were all doomed to destruction, 
and that the work of death would not cease 
till they had all perished. The king himself 
was filled with horror and alarm. Without 
truly repenting his obduracy, he bitterly 
lamented its effects. It appeared to him 
that the only method of arresting the pro- 
gress of the destruction was to send the 
Hebrews instantly away — in the fear that 
every moment they tarried would prove the 
loss of a thousand lives to Egypt. He 
therefore sent to Moses and Aaron by that 
very night — that hour — to tell them, " Get 
you forth from among my people, both ye 
and the children of Israel ; and go and serve 
the Lord as ye have said ; also take your flocks 
and herds, as ye have said, and be gone ; and 
bless me also." And the Egyptian people 
also, says the Scriptural narrative, were 
urgent upon them, to send them away in 
haste ; for they said, " We be all dead men." 
In their anxiety to get them off, lest every 
moment of their stay should prove the last 
to themselves or those dear to them, the 
Egyptians would have done anything to 
satisfy and oblige them. This favourable 
disposition had been foreseen from the be- 
ginning, and the Hebrews had been in- 
structed by Moses to take advantage of it, 
by borrowing ornaments of precious metal — 
" Jewels of silver and jewels of gold," with 
rich dresses, from the Egyptians. On the 
principle that, " all that a man hath he will 
give for his life," there can be no doubt but 
that, under circumstances which made them 
consider their own lives in jeopardy, and 
when the losses they had sustained were 
calculated to make their finery seem of small 
value in their sight, the Egyptians were 
quite as ready to lend as the Hebrews to 
borrow. The women also were authorized to 
borrow from the Egyptian females : and we 
may easily believe that their exertions added 
much to the large amount of valuable pro- 
perty which was extracted from the fears of 
the Egyptians. With whatever understand- 
ing these valuable articles were given and 
received, the ultimate effect is, that in this 
final settlement the Hebrews received some- 
thing like wages — though, as such, inade- 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



126 THE BIBLE HISTORY. [BOOK II. 




[Ornaments of Egyptian Females. " Jewels of gold and jewels of silver."] 



q Ua te — for the long services they had ren- 
dered to the Egyptians. 

So eager were the Egyptians to get them 
off, that, between persuasions, bribery, and 
gentle compulsion, the whole body had 
commenced its march before daybreak, 
although it was not till midnight that the 
first-born had been slain. They had no time 
even to bake the bread for which the dough 
was ready ; and they were, therefore, obliged 
to leave it in their dough bags, which they 
carried away, wrapped up in their clothes, 
with the view of preparing their bread when 
an opportunity might be offered by their first 
halt. Hurried as they were, they forgot not 
the bones of Joseph, which they had kept at 
hand, and now bore away with them. On 
they marched, driving before them their 
cattle and their beasts of burden, laden with 
their moveables and tents ; and themselves, 
some, doubtless, riding on camels, some on 
asses ; but, from the great number of these 
required for the women and the children, 
most of the men doubtless marched on foot. 
Thus, laden with the spoils of Egypt, they 
went on their way rejoicing, leaving the 
Egyptians to the things which belong to 
mourning and the grave. 

We are told that the number of the 
Israelites who on this eventful night com- 
menced their march was " about six hundred 
thousand on foot that were men, besides 



children." The description of men on foot 
denotes, as elsewhere appears, men fit to 
bear arms, excluding therefore not only those 
who are too young, but those who are too 
old for such service. As this prime class of 
the community is usually in the proportion 
of one-fourth of the whole population, the 
result would give nearly two millions and a 
half as the number of the posterity of Jacob. 
This number is so very high, that it has 
seemed incredible to many. We must con- 
fess, that it is difficult to realise the pre- 
sence of so vast a host, with their flocks and 
herds, and to form an idea of the immense 
area they would cover, w r ere only standing- 
room given to them, much more where en- 
camped under tents ; — and when we further 
consider the length and breadth of their 
moving body on a march, as well as the 
quantities of water they would require, we 
may be tempted to conclude that a much 
smaller number would amply justify the 
promises of God, and would render many 
circumstances in the ensuing portion of their 
history more easy to be understood. Beside 
this, the ancient manner of notation afforded 
temptations and facilities for the corruption 
of numbers, whence it happens that the 
most disputed texts of Scripture, and those 
in which, as the copies now stand, there are 
palpable contradictions, are those which 
contain numerical statements. We are not 



cnAP. in.] 



THE DELIVEKAXCE. 



127 



insensible to these considerations, and have 
endeavoured to assign them all the weight 
■which they are entitled to bear. But seeing 
that the present number, high as it is, has 
some support from collateral evidence, and 
from the considerations to which we have 
already adverted, and, above all, reflecting 
that the present number is a positive cir- 
cumstance, whereas all alteration could only 
be conjectural, we deem it the best and 
safest course to take the number as we find 
it in the present copies of the Pentateuch. 
But besides the descendants of Jacob, there 
was a large " mixed multitude," which went 
out of Egypt on this occasion. "Who they 
were is not clearly stated; but it would 
appear that the mass was formed of foreign 
slaves, belonging to the principal persons 
among the Hebrews, with a good number, 
probably, belonging to the Egyptians, who 
were glad to take the opportunity of escaping 
with the Israelites. Besides this, there were 
manifestly a considerable number of Egypt- 
ians of the poorer class, who perhaps ex- 
pected to better their condition in some way, 
or had other very good reasons for leaving 
Egypt : indeed, as it did not turn out that 
the Israelites were anything the better for 
their presence, we are free to confess that we 
think it likely they were chiefly such thieves, 
vagabonds, adventurers, and debtors as could 
no longer stay safely in Egypt. 

The circumstance that Moses was so well 
acquainted with the number of the Israelites 
before they left Egypt, intimates that an 
account of their numbers had not long before 
been taken by the Egyptians. That in- 
genious people employed very early, if they 
did not invent, the practice of taking a 
census of what is calied the effective part of 
the population ; and from them, unquestion- 
ably, the Israelites, under the direction of 
Moses, adopted this useful custom. In all 
such enumerations, in ancient times, the 
women and children were not included, and 
their number is never stated. But probably 
they were able to form an estimate of the 
proportion which the numbered part of the 
population bore to the whole ; although their 
conclusions in this matter must have been 
more uncertain than our own, which have 
I 



been founded on repeated actual enumera- 
tions of portions of the entire population 
which were never included in the ancient 
enumerations. 

The point from which the Hebrew host 
started on their march was Barneses, one of 
the " treasure cities " which they had built 
for Pharaoh in the land of Goshen, and which 
seems to have become the chief place in the 
territory they occupied. The difficulties in 
tracing their march begin at the very first 
stage. There are two preliminary questions, 
satisfactory information on which would 
much assist us in understanding the early 
part of their journey. The first is, the situ- 
ation of Barneses, from which they started ; 
and the second, the point to which their 
journey was, in the first instance, directed. 
On the first point no very satisfactory in- 
formation can be obtained. It is, indeed, 
not quite clear that any particular locality 
is intended, or whether the land of Goshen, 
in the large indefinite sense, may not be 
denoted by " the land of Barneses." But 
some information is reflected upon the first 
by the answer to the second of these ques- 
tions, which answer is, that the destination 
which was in the first instance contemplated, 
was doubtless the wilderness of Sinai. The 
land of Goshen appears most evidently to 
have bordered on, if it did not include, part 
of the tract over which the nearest and 
most convenient road to the peninsula of 
Sinai from the banks of the Nile has always 
passed. This is nearly the line in which, in 
after ages, a canal was made connecting the 
Nile with the Gulf of Suez ; and that, while 
it is the nearest route, it is the only one 
which offers a supply of water, is a con- 
sideration which doubtless as much recom- 
mended it in ancient times to those going 
from Egypt to Sinai or Arabia, as it does 
now recommend it to the great caravan of 
pilgrimage which yearly journeys from Cairo 
to Mecca. The route of this caravan is the 
same, as far as the head of the Gulf of Suez, 
as one would take which proceeds to the 
Desert of Sinai. "We shall therefore presume 
that this was the route taken. 

If the Hebrews were to have gone direct 
to take possession of the Promised Land, 



128 



THE BIBLE I1IST0UY. 



[BOOK II 



their nearest road would have been " through 
the way of the land of the Philistines;" 
that is, by the usual route from Egypt to 
Gaza. But the Philistines were, unquestion- 
ably, the most powerful and warlike people 
then in Palestine, and there was already 
some ill-blood between them and the Israel- 
ites *, and would be likely to offer a most 
formidable opposition to them at the very 
first step of their progress. The Hebrews 
were in fact altogether unfit to face such 
enemies, or any enemies whatever : they were 
not yet even fit to be a nation ; and there- 
fore, instead of being at once led to their 
promised heritage, it was the Divine will 
that they should be conducted into the 
Desert, there to be trained, disciplined, and 
instructed, so as to fit them for their future 
destinies. Moses knew that their first desti- 
nation was the wilderness of Sinai ; for when 
the Lord appeared to him in Horeb, it was 
announced that the bondaged children of 
Abraham should be brought to worship God 
in that very mountain. 

The Hebrews left Rameses and proceeded 
on their way. And now it appeared that the 
Lord provided against their going astray, by 
placing a miraculous column of cloud to go 
before them by day and mark out their road ; 
while by night it became a column of fire 
and gave light to all the camp. This was 
important, also, as evincing that Moses was 
not acting by his own authority, and that 
however highly he was entitled to their con- 
fidence and respect, they had a more un- 
erring Guide and a more exalted Protector. 

Their first day's journey brought them to 
Succoth. We relinquish the notion which 
we once entertained that Succoth may have 
been at or near the place (Birket el Hadj or 
Pilgrim's Pool) where the great pilgrim 
caravan encamps and makes its final arrange- 
ments for its journey. We think it, upon 
the whole, more likely that the point from 
which the Hebrews departed in the first in- 
stance may have been in that neighbourhood. 
Succoth, therefore, must be sought some- 
where about a day's journey in the direction 
towards Suez. The name denotes tents or 
booths, and it is useless to seek its site, as the 

* See page 101. 



name appears only to denote a place where 
caravans passing that way usually en- 
camped. 

Their next resting-place of which we are 
told was " Etham, in the edge of the wil- 
derness." But in this, as in other cases, we 
are not to suppose that the places which are 
named are the only places at which they . 
rested ; and in the present instance the dis- 
tance may suggest that this Etham was the 
third rather than the second encampment. 
The halting-places of caravans are in these 
desert regions so much determined by the 
presence of wells, that in connection with 
the circumstance of its being situated " in 
the edge of the wilderness," there is not 
much difficulty in concluding that Etham is 
represented by the modern Adjeroud, which 
forms the third stage of the pilgrim's 
caravan, and where there is an old fortress, a 
small village, and copious well of indifferent 
water. This place is about eleven miles to 
the north-west of Suez. The neighbourhood 
seems indeed to be on the edge of the wilder- 
ness : for what M. du Bois-Ayme says of Bir- 
Suez (which he identifies with Etham) is true 
also of Adjeroud, that, in effect, it appears 
to be towards the extremity of the desert : 
for from hence the sea is seen to make a 
bend to the west, and by joining the high 
chain of Mount Attaka to terminate the 
desert to the south. The journey to this 
point had been for the most part over a 
desert, the surface of which is composed of 
hard gravel, often strewed with pebbles. 

They had now arrived near the head of 
the Red Sea, and also, as we suppose, at the | 
limit of the three days' journey into the | 
wilderness for which they had applied. It | 
is, therefore, evident that their next move 
must decide their future course, and convey 
to the Egyptians a clear and decisive intima- 
tion of their intentions. If they designed to 
do as they had all along declared to be their 
only wish, they would stay at this place and 
proceed to celebrate the feast to Jehovah, 
of which so much had been said: but, if 
they intended to escape altogether, they 
would resume their journey, and, passing by 
the head of the Red Sea, strike off into the 
desert. And here God, who knew that the 



CHAP. HI,] 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



129 



king of Egypt had so far recovered his con- 
sternation that he was determined to pursue 
and drive them back, if they made any move 
indicating an intention to escape, directed a 
move which must have been most unexpected 
to all parties, and which could not to any 
indifferent spectator have seemed the result 
of the most gross and fatal infatuation. 

About the head of the Gulf of Suez a 
desert plain extends for ten or twelve miles 
to west and north of the city of that name. 
On the west this plain is bounded by the 
chain of Attaka, which comes down towards 
the sea in a north-easterly direction. Oppo- 
site Suez this chain is seen at a considerable 
distance, but. as we advance southward, the 
mountains rapidly approach the sea, and 
proportionately contract the breadth of the 
valley ; and the chain terminates at the sea, 
and seems, in the distant view, to shut up 
the valley at Ras-el-Attaka, or Cape Attaka, 
twelve miles below Suez. But on approach- 
ing this point, ample room is found to pass 
beyond ; and on passing beyond we find our- 
selves in a broad alluvial plain, forming the 
mouth of the valley of Bedea. This plain is 
on the other or southern side nearly shut up 
by the termination of another chain of these 
mountains, which extend between the Nile 
and the western shore of the Red Sea. Any 
further progress in this direction would be 
impossible to a large a^my, especially when 
encumbered with flocks and herds, and with 
women, children, and baggage ; and this 
from the manner in which the rocks, the 
promontories, and the cliffs advance on the 
western shore. And, besides, any advance 
in this direction would be suicidal to a body 
desiring to escape from Egypt, as they would 
have the Red Sea between them and Arabia 
Proper, and could only get involved among 
the plains and valleys which separate the 
mountain-chains of Egyptian Arabia. 

The valley of Bedea, which opens to the 
Red Sea in the broad plain to which we have 
brought the reader, narrows as it proceeds 
westward towards the Nile. It forms a fine 
roadway between the valley of the Nile and 
the Red Sea, and, as such, has in all ages 
been one of the most frequented routes in all 
the country, being traversed by all parties 



and caravans which desire to proceed from 
the neighbourhood of Cairo, or places to the 
south of Cairo, to Suez, or to places lying 
beyond the head of the gulf. 

Now, the Hebrew host being at Etham, 
and their next step from thence being of the 
utmost importance, they were directed, not 
— as might obviously have been expected — 
to pass round the head of the gulf into the 
Sinai peninsula, but to proceed southward, 
between the mountains of Attaka and the 
ivestern shore of the gulf, and, after passing 
the Ras-el-Attaka, to encamp in the plain 
into which the valley of Bedea opens. The 
more thoroughly any one makes himself 
acquainted with the topography of this 
region, the more obvious and reasonable, we 
are persuaded, will seem to him this explana- 
tion of the text — " Turn and encamp before 
Pi-ha-hiroth [the mouth of the ridge], 
between Migdol and the sea, over against 
Baalzephon : before it shall ye encamp by 
the sea." As the names Migdol and Baal- 
zephon are not now recognisable anywhere 
about the head of the gulf*, no facts or 
inferences can be deduced from them ; but 
an important confirmation is derived from 
the circumstance that we are told that, in 
consequence of the move which was made, 
the Hebrew host were shut up between the 
sea and the mountains, without any means 
of escape, unless through the sea, when the 
retreat in the rear was cut off. 

Many have thought they found cause to 
wonder at this extraordinary movement, 
which placed the Hebrews in a position of 
such inextricable difficulty, forgetting that 
this was the very purpose of God, that the 
prospect of an extraordinary advantage 
might tempt the Egyptians on to their own 
destruction, and bring them within the 
reach of those agencies by which God 
intended to act against them. The wonder 
which the reader may feel is exactly the 
wonder which the king of Egypt felt, and by 
which he was led on to his ruin. 

* Migdol was probably a tower, as the name imports, and 
may seem to have beer, on the mountains which hem in 
the valley. Baal-zephon, meaning the Northern Baal or 
Lord, would seem to have been a town or temple situated 
somewhere in the plain of Medea, or over agaimt it on the 
eastern shore of the sea. 



K 



130 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



The movement was made ; and the thou- 
sands of Israel encamped in the plain of 
Bedea. 

The days which had passed had given the 
Egyptians time to recover from some portion 
of their panic; and their first feeling, of 
unmixed horror and alarm, gave place to 
considerable resentment and regret, on the 
king's part, that he had so suddenly conceded 
all the points which had been contested 
between him and Moses, and had allowed 
them all to depart; and as for his subjects, 
such of them as had a profitable interest in 
the labours of the Israelites would, to some 
extent, join in the king's feelings, as soon as 
their bondsmen took any course to intimate 
that they intended to escape ; and the same 
intimation would not fail to alarm those who 
had "lent" to the Hebrews their "jewels of 
silver and jewels of gold," and who by this 
time had found leisure to think that they 



had too easily parted with their wealth. 
Thus it seems that the course which the 
Israelites might take after their arrival at 
Etham was regarded with much anxiety by 
the Egyptians, who took care to be informed 
of all their movements. 

When, therefore, the king heard not only 
that they had taken a decisive move from 
Etham, but, through some astonishing infa- 
tuation, had so moved as to become " entangled 
in the land," and that the " wilderness had 
shut them in," he hastened to avail himself 
of the extraordinary advantage which they 
had placed in his hands. " He made ready 
his chariot, and took his people with him." 
He mustered not less than six hundred 
chariots, which are said to be all the [war] 
chariots of Pharaoh. This is in correspond- 
ence with the sculptures, which show that 
the Egyptians made great use in war of such 
chariots as our cut exhibits. A large body 




[Egyptian War Chariot. J 



of infantry was also assembled, and the 
pursuit commenced. Their light, unencum- 
bered march was, no doubt, much more 
quickly performed than that of the Israelites 
to the same place. 

One of the citations in Eusebius from the 
lost history of Manetho, the Egyptian priest, 
says, " The Heliopolitans relate that the 
king, with a great army, accompanied by the 
sacred animals, pursued after the Jews, teho 



had carried off with them the substance of the 
Egyptians." * This takes notice of two facts 
not mentioned by Moses, but not at all 
disagreeing with his statement, namely, that, 
for their protection against the God of Israel, 
the Egyptians took with them their sacred 
animals, by which means the Lord executed 
judgment upon the [bestial] gods of Egypt, 
as had been foretold (Exod. xii. 12); and 

* ' Praep. Evang.' lib. x. cap. 27. 



chap, in.] 

then that to recover the substance which the 
Hebrews had " borrowed" was one of the 
objects of the pursuit. 

We do not agree with those who think 
that the king of Egypt came upon the 
encamped Hebrews through the valley of 
Bedea, in the plain at the mouth of which 
they were encamped. As he was so glad to 
find how they had " entangled themselves in 
the land," he was not likely to take a course 
which would deprive him of all the advan- 
tages derivable from their apparent oversight. 
This he would do by coming upon them 
through the valley of Bedea, for this would 
have left open to them the alternative of 
escaping from their position by the way they 
entered ; whereas, by coming the same way 
they had come, he shut up that door of 
escape; and, if they fled before him, left 
them no other visible resource but to march 
up the valley of Bedea, back to Egypt, before 
the Egyptian troops. That this was really 
the advantage to himself which the king saw 
in their position, and that it was his object 
to drive them before him back to Egypt 
through this valley, or to destroy them if 
they offered to resist, we have not the least 
doubt : and it is unlikely that he would take 
any road but that which would enable him 
to secure these benefits. 

The Egyptians, being satisfied that they 
had secured their prey, and that it was im- 
possible for their fugitive bondsmen to 
escape but by returning to Egypt, were in 
no haste to assail them. They were also, 
themselves, probably, wearied by their rapid 
march. They therefore encamped for the 
night — for it was towards evening when they 
arrived— intending, probably, to give effect 
to their intentions in the morning. 

As for the Israelites, the sight of their old 
oppressors struck them with terror. There 
was no faith or spirit in them. They knew 
not how to value their newly-found liberty. 
They deplored the rash adventure in which 
they had engaged ; and their servile minds 
looked back with regret and envy upon the 
enslaved condition which they had so lately 
deplored. Moses knew them well enough 
not to be surprised that they assailed him as 
the author of all the calamities to which 



131 I 



they were now exposed. Is it " because | 
there were no graves in Egypt," said they, j 
" thou hast taken us away to die in the wil- 
derness ? Is not this the word that we did 
tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that 
we may serve the Egyptians? For it had 
been better for us to serve the Egyptians 
than that we should die in the wilderness." 
This is one specimen of a mode of feeling 
and character among this spiritless and per- 
verse people of which Moses had seen some- 
thing already, and of which he had soon 
occasion to see much more. One might be 
disposed to judge of their feelings the more 
leniently, attributing them to the essential 
operation of personal slavery in enslaving 
the mind, by debasing its higher tones of 
feeling and character, did we not know that 
the same characteristics of mind and temper 
constantly broke out among this remarkable 
people very long after the generation which 
knew the slavery of Egypt had passed away. 

Moses did not deign to remonstrate with 
them or to vindicate himself. It seems that 
the Divine intention had been previously 
intimated to him ; for he answered, with that 
usual emphasis of expression which makes it 
a pleasure to transcribe his words — " Fear 
ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of 
the Lord, which he will show to you to-day : 
for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, 
ye shall see them again no more for ever. 
The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall 
hold your peace." They were pacified by 
this for the present ; but there is good reason 
to suspect that, if measures of relief had j 
long been delayed, they would have given j 
up Moses and Aaron to the Egyptians, and 
have placed themselves at their disposal. 
But measures of relief were not long delayed. 
When the night was fully come, the Lord 
directed Moses to order the people to march 
forward to the sea; on their arriving at 
which the prophet lifted up his rod upon the 
waters, over which instantly blew a powerful 
east wind, by which they were divided from 
shore to shore, so that the firm bottom of 
hard sand appeared : offering a dry road in 
the midst of the sea, by which they might j 
pass to the eastern shore. At that instant \ 
also the pillar of fire which had gone before 

. ■ — i 

k 2 



THE DELIVERANCE. 



132 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



the Hebrews to guide them on their way was 
removed to their rear, and, being thus be- 
tween them and the Egyptians, it gave light 
to the former in their passage, while it con- 
cealed their proceedings and persons from 
the latter. 

It thus happened that some time passed 
before the Egyptians discovered that the 
Israelites were in motion. When they made 
this discovery, the king determined to follow. 
It is by no means clear that they knew or 
thought that they were following them into 
the bed of the sea. Considering the dark- 
ness of the night, except from the light of 
the pillar, with the confusion of ideas and 
indistinct perceptions of a people who had 
not been on the spot long enough to make 
particular observations, and most of them 
probably roused from sleep to join in the 
pursuit, it seems likely that they felt uncer- 
tain about the direction, and supposed that 
they were following some accustomed route 
by which the Israelites were either endea- 
vouring to escape or to return to Egypt. 
They may even have thought they were 
going up the valley of Bedea, although that 
actually lay in an opposite direction. Any- 
thing, however improbable, seems more likely 
to have occurred to theiri than that they 
were passing through the divided sea. 

By the time the day broke and the 
Egyptians became aware of their condition, 
all the Hebrews had safely reached the other 
side, and all or nearly all the Egyptians 
were in the bed of the gulf ; the van approach- 
ing the eastern shore, and the rear having 
left the western. The moment of vengeance 
was come. They found themselves in the 
midst of the sea, with the waters on their 
right hand and on their left, and only 
restrained from overwhelming them by some 
power they knew not, but which they must 
have suspected to have been that of the God 
of the Hebrews. The marine road, ploughed 
by the multitudes which went before them, 
became distressing to them ; their chariot- 
wheels dragged heavily along, and very 
many of them came off from the cars which 
they supported. The Lord also began to 
trouble them with a furious warfare of the 
elements. The Psalmist more than once 



alludes to this. He exclaims, « The waters 
saw thee, God, the waters saw thee ; they 
were afraid:" and then speaks as if every 
element had spent its fury upon the devoted 
heads of the Egyptians. The earth shook ; 
the thunders rolled ; and most appalling 
lightnings — the arrows of God — shot along 
the firmament ; t while the clouds poured 
down heavy rains, " hailstones, and coals of 
fire."* It deserves to be mentioned that 
this strife is also recorded by the Egyptian 
chronologer, who reports, "It is said that 
fire flashed against them in front." 

By this time the pursuers were thoroughly 
alarmed. " Let us flee," said they, " from 
the face of Israel; for Jehovah fighteth for 
them against the Egyptians." But at that 
instant the Lord gave the word, Moses 
stretched forth his hand over the sea, and 
the restrained waters returned and engulfed 
them all. 

This stupendous event made a profound 
impression upon the Hebrew mind at large. 
From that day to the end of the Hebrew 
polity, it supplied a subject to which the 
sacred poets and prophets make constant 
allusions in language the most sublime. Its 
effect upon the generation more immediately 
concerned was very strong, and, although 
they were but too prone to forget it, was 
more abiding and operative than any which 
had yet been made upon them. When they 
witnessed all these things, and soon after 
saw the carcases of those who had so lately 
been the objects of such intense dread to 
them, lying by thousands on the beach — 
" They feared the Lord, and believed the 
Lord, and his servant Moses." 

In the sublime song which Moses composed 
and sang with the sons of Israel in comme- 
moration of this great event — their marvel- 
lous deliverance and the overthrow of their 
enemies — he, with his usual wisdom, looks 
forward to important ulterior effects, to 
secure to the Hebrews the benefit of which 
may not improbably have formed one of the 
principal reasons for this remarkable exhibi- 
tion of the power of Jehovah, and of his 
determination to protect the chosen race. 
These anticipations, which were abundantly 

* Psalm xviii. 13—15; lxxvii. 16, 17. 



CHAP. III.] 



THE DELIVEKANCE. 



1 

133 



fulfilled, are contained in the following 
I verses: — 

! " The nations shall hear this and tremble ; 

Anguish shall seize the inhabitants of Pales- 
tine. 

Then shall the princes of Edom be amazed ; 
And dismay shall possess the mighty ones of 
Moab. 

All the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt 
away : 

Fear and terror shall fall upon them : 
Through the greatness of thine arm 
They shall become still as a stone *, 
Until thy people pass over [Jordan], Jeho- 
vah, 

Until thy people pass over whom thou hast 
redeemed." f 

On this occasion the first instance is 
offered of a custom, learnt most probably in 
Egypt, and ever retained by the Hebrew 
women, of celebrating with dances and tim- 
brels every remarkable event of joy or 
triumph. They were now led by Miriam, 
the sister of Moses and Aaron; and they 
seem to have taken part as a chorus in the 
song of the men, by answering : — 

" Let us sing unto the Lord, for he hath 
triumphed gloriously, 
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into 
the sea." 

It will appear, from the opinion we have 
been induced to entertain respecting the 
place in which the Israelites encamped, and 
from which they departed, on the western 
shore of the gulf, that we concur with those 
who regard Ain MousaJ as the place, on the 
eastern shore, where they came up from the 
bed of the sea, and where they witnessed the 
overthrow of their oppressors. We shall not 
here add anything to the consideration by 
which we have in another place § endeavoured 

* That is, " Shall be petrified." 
t Exod. xv. 14—16. 
± The Fountains of Moses. 
§ « Pictorial Bible,* note on Exod. xiv. 2. 



to support this conclusion. That the site is 
thus distinguished in the local traditions of 
the inhabitants of Sinai, the name alone 
suffices to indicate; and, although undue 
weight should not be attached to such 
traditions, it would be wrong entirely to 
disregard them when they support or illus- 
trate conclusions otherwise probable. We 
shall, however, content ourselves with adding, 
descriptively, that a number of green shrubs, 
springing from numerous hillocks, mark the 
landward approach to this place. Here are 
also a number of neglected palm-trees grown 
thick and bushy for want of pruning. The 
springs which here rise out of the ground in 
various places, and give name to the spot, 
are soon lost in the sands. The water is of 
a brackish quality, in consequence, probably, 
: of the springs being so near the sea ; but it 
is, nevertheless, cool and refreshing, and in 
these waterless deserts affords a desirable 
resting-place. The view from this place, 
looking westward, is very beautiful, and 
' most interesting from its association with 
; the wonderful events which it has been our 
I duty to relate. The mountain chains of 
! Attaka, each running into a long promontory, j 

stretch along the shore of Africa; and nearly 
j opposite our station Ave view the opening — 
< the Pi-ha-biroth — the " mouth of the ridge," 
I formed by the valley in the mouth of which 
the Hebrews were encamped before they 
: crossed the sea. On the side where we stand, 
the access to the shore from the bed of the 
gulf would have been easy. And it deserves 
to be mentioned, that not only do the springs 
bear the name of Moses, but the projecting 
head-land below them, towards the sea, bears 
the name of Ras Mousa. Thus do the Cape 
of Moses and the Cape of Deliverance look 
towards each other from the opposite shores 
of the Arabian Gulf, and unite their abiding 
and unshaken testimony to the judgments 
and wonders of that day in which the right 
hand of Jehovah was so abundantly " glori- 
fied in might." 



134 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IT. 



CHAPTER IV. 
SINAI. 



Tiie Israelites, now relieved from all fear of 
the Egyptians, probably made some con- 
siderable stay at Ain Mousa. The district 
was then regarded as " the wilderness of 
Shur," a name of wide extent, a clear trace 
of which is still exhibited in the present 
name of Sdur. 

When they departed, their road lay over a 
desert region, sandy, gravelly, and stony, 
alternately. On their right hand their eyes 
rested on the deep blue waters of the gulf so 
lately sundered for their sake ; while on 
their left hand the mountain-chain of El 
Ruhat, stretching away to a greater distance 
from the shore as the pilgrims advanced. 
In about nine miles they entered a boundless 
desert plain, called El Ati, white and pain- 
fully glaring to the eye. Proceeding beyond 
this, the ground became hilly, with sand-hills 
near the coast. In all this way, which it 
took them three days to traverse, they found 
no water; but then at last they came to a 
well, the waters of which were so bitter, that 
it bore the name of Marah [Bitterness]. That 
name, in the form of Amarah, is now borne 
by the barren bed of a winter torrent a little 
beyond which is still found a well, bearing 
the name of Howara, whose bitter waters 
answer to this description. Camels will 
drink it ; but even the thirsty Arabs never 
drink of it themselves ; and it is the only 
water on the shore of the Red Sea which 
they cannot drink. This, when first taken 
into the mouth, seems insipid rather than 
bitter ; but when held in the mouth a few 
seconds it becomes extremely nauseous. This 
well rises within an elevated mound sur- 
rounded by sand-hills, and two small date- 
trees grow near it*. 

The Hebrews, unaccustomed as yet to the 
hardships of the desert, and having been in 
the habit of drinking their fill of the best 
water in the world, were much distressed by 

* Lord Lindsay's ' Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the 
Holy Land,' ii. 263. 



the scarcity of water in the region in which 
they now wandered, and they were dis- 
appointed of the relief they expected from 
this well ; they murmured greatly against 
Moses for having brought them into such a 
dry wilderness, and asked him, " What shall 
we drink 1 ?" On this Moses cried to Jehovah, 
who indicated to him an unknown tree, on 
throwing the branches of which into the well, 
the waters became sweet and fit for use. 

Departing thence, they soon found the 
country become more mountainous and pic- 
turesque ; and when they arrived at Elim, 
the cheerful presence of twelve wells of 
water and seventy palm-trees engaged them, 
to encamp. This spot is, with sufficient 
probability, supposed to be the same as that 
which now bears the name of Wady Ghar- 
endel, which is the largest of all the torrent 
beds on the western side of the peninsula. 
It is about a mile broad, and extends away 
indefinitely to the north-east. This pleasant 
valley abounds in date-trees, tamarisks, acacia, 
and the shrub ghurkudf ; but the springs 
are too distant from the common route to be 
visited by travellers. 

Soon after the Hebrew host left Elim, they 
entered the " wilderness of Sinai, which is 
between Elim and Sinai," which we interpret 
to signify the rocky desert — yet not without 
pleasant valleys here and there — which ex- 
tends from below Wady Gharendel to the 
borders of the Upper Sinai, or, more pre- 
cisely, to the neighbourhood of Wady Feiran 
and Mount SerbalJ. By this time a month 
had passed since they left Egypt, and the 
provisions on which they had hitherto sub- 
sisted began to run short. On this, as usual, 
they murmured against their leaders, in such 
a style, that we can scarcely help regarding 
them as being, at that time, a body of the 
most gross and gluttonous slaves with which 

f Vegaman retusum. — Forskal. 

+ Wady Mokatteb is one of the valleys of this distriot, j 
and through it the most common route lies. 



history makes us acquainted. " Would 
to God," cried they, "we had died by the 
hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when 
we sat by the fleshpots, and when we did eat 
bread to the full ; for ye have brought us 
forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole 
assembly with hunger." Exod. xvi. 3. 

It may seem strange that a people who 
possessed flocks and herds in abundance 
should utter such a complaint. But it is 
true that there are, at this day, few people 
who eat less animal food than the pastoral 
tribes of Western Asia; and to them the 
slaughter of a productive animal seems an 
act of extravagance almost culpable, unless 
performed to furnish an entertainment for 
friends or strangers. The animal food which 
the Israelites had eaten in Egypt was de- 
rived from the Egyptians, not from their own 
flocks and herds : merely as a pastoral people 
they would not have felt the want of flesh- 
meat ; but, having now been accustomed to 
it in the service of the Egyptians, they felt 
an inclination for it,— but not at the expense 
of their own flocks and herds. In short, it 
may be well to understand that meat is upon 
the whole regarded as a luxury, rather than 
as a usual article of food, among the pastoral 
tribes, and even, although in a less degree, 
among the settled communities of Western 
Asia. The want of corn formed a fairer 
subject of complaint ; for some kind of grain 
is necessary even to a Bedouin, and must 
have seemed particularly necessary to those 
who had all their lives eaten bread to the 
full in the country where corn was the most 
abundantly produced. 

The reply to their complaint was. that 
they should that very evening have meat to 
eat, and in the morning bread to the full. 
But they were reminded that the miraculous 
gratification of their wants by the power of 
Jehovah might also evince that He had 
heard their murmurings, which, although 
immediately levelled at Moses and Aaron, 
were in reality murmurings against him, and 
implied distrust of his power and his care. 
To confirm this, they were directed to look 
towards the wilderness, where they beheld 
the effulgence or glory by which he manifested 
his presence, beaming forth from the cloud 



which went before them and rested with 
them. It proved, however, that the meat— 
the luxury — and which they had other 
means of obtaining— was supplied only this 
time and once again the next year ; whereas 
bread, or rather a substitute for it, which 
they could not otherwise have obtained, was 
supplied to them constantly from that time 
forward. 

Poultry and feathered game have in all 
ages been favourite articles of food in Egypt. 
The Egyptians were expert fowlers, and had 
the art of salting for future use some of those 
birds of passage which are plentiful at one 
time of the year, and not at all seen in the 
other part. Among these birds quails were 
not the least esteemed. They are plentiful 
in Egypt from about the middle of autumn 
to the beginning of summer, when, that and 
the adjoining countries becoming too hot for 
them, while the more northern countries 
have 'ceased to be too cold, they take wing, 
and proceed to the north, or north-west, or 
east, their immediate course being much 
determined by the direction of the wind, 
which at the time of their flight in the late 
spring blows generally from the south. 

Now God, at the time fixed by himself, 
supplied the Hebrews with food— the food 
they desired— through such a flight of quails. 
He gave the wind which directed the course 
of an enormous flight of these birds over the 
camp of the Israelites, where, wearied with 
their flight across the Red Sea, they flew so 
heavily and low, that it was easy for the 
people to capture immense numbers of them. 
Thus were they, for the time, abundantly 
supplied with the sort of food they had been 
taught to value in Egypt ; and the arrival, 
exactly at their camp, of this immense flock 
of quails, might have sufficed to convince 
even their obduracy that they were indeed 
the special objects of care to an Almighty 
protector and guide. 

But this was not all ; for the next morning 
there was a fall of dew around the camp; 
and, when the dew had dried up, the ground 
was' found to be covered with a small and 
shining substance, small as the particles of 
hoar-frost, and in shape like coriander-seed. 
The Hebrews, who had never before beheld 



136 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



such a substance, asked one another, " What 
is it?" [Man-hit?] from which question it 
took the name of Manna. Moses answered 
their question by telling them that this was 
the provision of bread which the Lord had 
promised, and of which every man was di- 
rected to take the quantity of a homer* for 
each member of his family. They did so. 
Some gathered more and some less ; but, as 
the whole was afterwards measured out at 
the rate of a homer to each person, "he 
that gathered much had nothing over, and 
he that gathered little had no lack." They 
were then fully instructed in the nature and 
use of this marvellous food. They were told, 
indeed they saw, that all which remained 
ungathered dissolved in the heat of the sun 
and was lost. They were also informed that 
the quantity collected was only intended for 
the food of the current day, and that if any 
of it were kept till the next morning it 
would corrupt and breed worms. Notwith- 
standing this, some of the people did, out of 
curiosity or precaution, save some of it, which 
in the morning was found to be in a con- 
dition so stinking and full of worms as to be 
entirely unfit for use. And yet it was di- 
rected that a double quantity should be 
gathered on the sixth day ; for the seventh 
day was henceforth to be observed by the 
Israelites as a day of rest from all labour, 
and on that day no fresh manna would be 
supplied. That day they were to live on the 
surplus quantity which they collected the 
day before ; and it proved that the quantity 
thus kept for the sabbath remained sweet 
and wholesome, notwithstanding that it cor- 
rupted if kept more than one day under 
ordinary circumstances. In preparing this 
matter for use, they found that they could 
deal with it much as with grain. They 
ground it in their hand-mills, or pounded it 
in mortars, kneaded it into dough, and baked 
it in one kind of pan-oven, or upo?i one of 
another kind, according to the processes of 
preparing bread, which were used in Ancient 
Egypt, and are still preserved in the East. 
It was thus made into cakes, which is the 
form usually given to Oriental bread; and 
these cakes were found to taste like the 



* About five and one-tenth pints. 



finest bread made with honey, or, as described 
in another place, with oilf. 

Such was the substance, and thus was it 
supplied, which formed « the staff of life" to 
the vast Hebrew host through all their long 
stay in the wilderness. 

From the station in the wilderness of Sin 
which these transactions made so memorable 
the Israelites continued their journey over a 
sandy and stony region, intersected by the 
beds of numerous torrents, which are per- 
fectly dry, except in the season of rain, when 
some of them are of very considerable depth. 
Except at that season water is scarce ; and 
by the usual and nearest route, which is 
generally supposed to be that which was 
taken by the Israelites, occurs only at two 
places before reaching Wady Feiran. These 
places we incline to think were the stations 
Dophkah and Alush, at which we are told 
the host rested between the Desert of Sin 
and RephidimJ. The first of these is at 
Wady Naszeb, where the neighbourhood of a 
well of good water, combined with the 
shelter of a large impending rock, makes the 
most favourite resting-place which this wild 
region offers. The other may have been at 
Wady Boodra, where there is a spring of 
good water, which, being somewhat aside 
from the common road and often choked 
with sand, has escaped the notice of most 
travellers. 

The next rest of the Israelites was at Re- 
phidim. where no water could be found. 
The determination of this station and of the 
two preceding is connected with an inquiry 
concerning the true situation of Mount Sinai, 
from which they received the law, and before 
which they remained so long encamped ; for 
Rephidim was the last resting-place before 
reaching the base of that mountain. 

The more diligently we compare the ac- 
counts of Scripture with the statements of 
travellers, the more entirely we are convinced 
that the mountains now pointed out as 
Horeb and Sinai could not possibly be the 
scene of the transactions which the Hebrew 



t Compare the accounts of this manna given in Exod. 
xvi. 14. 23, and Num. xi. 7—9. 

$ Num. xxxiii. 12, 13. The list of names in this chapter 
contains many stations omitted in Exodus. 




MOUNT AND PLAIN OF SINAI. 



CHAP. IV.] 



SINAI. 



137 



history records. How these high interior 
mountains, surrounded by narrow ravines 
and valleys, in which it is impossible that 
the host of Israel could have remained en- 
camped with the room and comfort which 
they manifestly enjoyed, is not a question 
which requires consideration in this place. 
But it is probable that, when attention 
began to be strongly directed towards Sinai, 
during the first fervour of the spirit for pil- 
grimages, and when it was determined to 
build a convent in this place, the present 
spot was deemed the most eligible for the 
establishment, and that therefore the monks 
successfully endeavoured to direct attention 
to it as the sacred locality. In this they 
were no doubt powerfully aided by the 
discovery of the pretended remains of St. 
Catherine upon the summit of the mountain 
which has since borne her name. It is to 
her honour that the convent is dedicated. 
However this be, more than one of our moj e 
inquiring travellers have been struck by the 
unsuitableness of the alleged Sinai to be the 
scene of the circumstances we shall presently 
relate. In this belief we have sought for a 
mountain in this region which might be 
open to none of the objections to which the 
other is liable. "We thiuk that we have 
found this in the Mount Serbal. 

The grandeur of this mountain is not 
exceeded by that of any other in Sinai ; 
indeed, its grandeur is, in appearance, the 
greatest, seeing that it raises its equal height 
from lower ground, in more distinctness and 
fulness of separate form, and in majesty 
more single and apart, while around it, 
I instead of narrow ravines, it overlooks broad 
and rich valleys and ample plains, in which 
even so immense a host as that of Israel 
might remain conveniently encamped with 
all their nocks and herds. And besides this, 
such are the manifest tokens in the caves 
which have been formed, and in the inscrip- 
tions with which its sides are charged, that 
Mount Serbal was in ancient times regarded 
; as a holy mountain ; that even Burckhardt 
' allows that this was probably considered the 
| * Mount of God," before that distinction was 
! applied to the mountain which now bears it, 
' and which he thinks is justly entitled to it. 



We recommend the subject to the more par- 
ticular inquiries of those who feel any interest 
in it ; and, meanwhile, we shall probably be 
thought entitled to assume the probability 
we have wished to establish. 

But if Mount Serbal was the Sinai, then 
the station Rephidim, where the host of 
Israel thirsted before they came to Sinai, 
must also have been before Mount Serbal ; 
and then, reflectively, if Rephidim was before 
Mount Serbal, the greater is the probability 
that Mount Serbal is Sinai. But Rephidim 
was certainly not at the place where it is 
now fixed, which is in about the most im- 
possible situation that can be conceived, and 
where no one in his senses would have 
dreamed of looking for it, unless the monks 
of St. Catherine's convent had found it con- 
venient so near at hand. It is high up the 
central cluster of mountains in the ravine 
or very narrow valley, El Erbayn, which 
separates the summits of St. Catherine and 
•the so-called Sinai. As there is not one 
circumstance of probability or of congruity 
with the sacred narrative in this position, 
we shall waste no words to disprove it, but 
content ourselves with intimating .that there 
is no part of this central region in which a 
miracle to produce water would not have 
been grossly superfluous, so abundant are 
the natural springs. Seeing, therefore, that 
Rephidim could not be here, that no man 
need feel thirst after he has entered or passed 
the beautiful and well-watered valley of 
Feiran*, which extends before and leads to 
Mount Serial) we have concluded that Re- 
phidim must have been at some point before 
that valley was reached. 

In this place the people, unmindful, in the 
agonies of their thirst, of the experienced 
mercies of God, began to murmur so loudly 
against Moses and Aaron, that unless im- 
mediate relief were afforded it seemed likely 
that they would be stoned by the now fierce 
multitude. Moses cried to God, who told 
him to take the elders of the people on with 
him as witnesses, and smite with his rod a 

* Which name is und ubtedly the same as Paran, a 
name which Scripture applies to Mount Sinai. Now this 
valley, still bearing this name, extends in front of Serbal. 
Lord Lindsay has a fine descrip.ion of this valley, i. 
275—281. 



138 



THE BIBLE HISTOItY. 



[book II. 



rock in Horeb, from which streams of water 
should then miraculously flow to give drink 
to the people. This was done ; and to com- 
memorate the transaction Moses imposed on 
the place the names of Massa [Temptation] 
and Meribah [Contention]*. 

We have not hitherto heard of the in- 
habitants of the Sinai peninsula, or under- 
stood how they were affected by the recent 
transactions, or with what feelings they 
regarded the advance of the vast Hebrew 
host into the finest part of the country. We 
now hear of them. 

It appears that not only the peninsula, 
but the adjoining deserts towards the south 
of Palestine, were in the occupation of an 
extensive and powerful tribe, of Bedouin or 
semi-Bedouin habits, called Amalekites. The 
fine valley of Feiran was then, doubtless, as 
now, the principal scat of those who occupied 
the peninsula ; and, indeed, the Arabian 
historians preserve the tradition that the 
valley contained ancient settlements and 
towns of the Amalekites. There are some 
ruins of an old city, which they say was 
i^aran or Paran, and that it was founded by, 
and belonged to, the Amalekites ; and they 
affirm that the numerous excavations in the 
mountains near, were the sepulchres of that 
people t. 

These Amalekites determined to resist the 
further progress of the Israelites, who had 
now, as we have supposed, reached the very 
borders of their chief settlements in Wady 
Feiran. Their knowledge of the wealth with 
which the Hebrews were at this time laden 
—the spoils of Egypt,— probably tended the 
more to excite and strengthen this resolve. 
That they should venture to assail such an 
immense body as that of the Hebrews may, 
at first, seem strange ; but we are to consider 
that they probably looked upon them as a 
confused body of spiritless slaves — as, in fact, 
they were, — debilitated, morally at least, by 
their long bondage in Egypt ; and they had 
doubtless military experience enough to know 
that the numbers of a host composed like this, 

* " Because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and 
I because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among 
. us, or not?"— Exqd. xvii. 7- 

t Makrizi in Burcl hardt, p. 617- 



and encumbered with women and children, 
flocks and herds, did not render them the more 
formidable. 

When the hostile intentions of the Amale- 
kites were discovered, Moses, well acquainted 
with the courage and discretion of his per- 
sonal follower, Joshua, whose name now oc- 
curs for the first time, resolved to confide to 
him the conduct of this first military action. 
He was directed to form a chosen body from 
the whole host, and with them give battle 
to the Amalekites the next morning. When 
that morning broke, Joshua advanced against 
the enemy, while Moses ascended a hill with 
Aaron and Hur, that he might view the battle, 
and pray to the Lord for success in this first 
essay of arms. He lifted his hands in prayer 
as the armies met, and Amalek was unable 
to withstand the force of the Hebrew onset. 
Moses ceased his prayer, and Amalek pre- 
vailed ; but when the prophet again lifted 
up his faithful and clean hands, Joshua 
was again the stronger. Seeing this, he 
determined to continue in prayer ; but, when 
weariness overcame him, Aaron and Hur 
brought him a stone on which he sat, while 
they sustained his uplifted arms until the 
setting of the sun, by which time the Amale- 
kites were completely routed. It was thus 
that God convinced the Hebrews that the 
glory of this victory was due to Him, and 
not themselves— to his favour, and not their 
strength. 

Bitter was the doom pronounced from 
Heaven upon the Amalekites, for this first 
act of hostility against the chosen people, in 
their most weak and unorganised condition. 
And to understand it clearly, we should 
recollect that this act was one of defiance 
against the Power by which they were pro- 
tected : for the Amalekites had seen before 
their very eyes the wonders which the Lord 
had wrought for this people in the Red Sea 
and in the desert ; and the aggression was, 
therefore, in every way stronger than that 
of any people with whom, in after days, the 
Hebrews were engaged in warfare. They 
lifted up their swords against the Israelites, 
in the very presence, as it were, of that 
mighty Protector, the mere report of whose 
deeds struck terror into the hearts of na- 



chap, rv.] siNAi. 139 



i tions, later in time and remoter in place, 
who had only heard of those things by " the 
hearing of the ear." For this their doom 
was abiding enmity and ultimate extirpation; 
and very noticeable are the terms in which 

1 it is expressed — showing the superior ini- 

: portance which was now attached to written 
testimonials : " Write this for a memorial in a 
book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: 

! for I will utterly put out the remembrance 
of Amalek from under heaven." To impress 

j it upon the people that their deliverance was 
due to God, Moses erected an altar, at which 
their thanks might be publicly acknowledged, 
and the memory of their deliverance per- 
petuated: and the name which he imposed 
upon it, Jehovah-Nissi [Jehovah is my 
Banner], made it a memorial of their ob- 
ligation to extirpate Amalek. 

This victory enabled the Hebrew host to 
advance, and encamp in peace in the wilder- 
ness at the foot of " the great mountain," 
which they did on the first day of the third 
month from their leaving Egypt. 

This was the point of their immediate des- 
tination: in this place they were to behold 
the glory of their God, veiled in clouds, — to 
hear His voice amid the thunder, — to see 
His glances in the lightning, — and to feel 
the power of his right arm when it shook 
the mountains. 

No sooner had they arrived at this place 
than the operation for which they were 
brought there, of forming them into a pe- 
culiar nation, commenced. The first mea- 
sure was to obtain from the Israelites a dis- 
tinct and formal recognition of the supreme 
authority of Jehovah, and the promise of 
implicit obedience to it. Moses, who had 
gone up into the mountain, returned to the 
Israelites, with instructions to say to them, 
in the name of God, " Ye have seen what I 
did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare 
you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto 
myself. Now, therefore, if ye will obey my 
voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye 
shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above 
all people: for all the earth is mine: And 
ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, 
and a holy nation."* As they were unac- 

* Exod. xix. 4—6. 



quainted with any other priests than those 
of Egypt, the words in the last sentence pro- 
bably conveyed to them the impression that 
from among the nations of the earth it was 
proposed to set them apart to his peculiar 
service and honour, in like manner as the 
hierarchy of Egypt was set apart as a dis- 
tinct and honoured caste from among the 
Egyptian people. 

The cheerful and ready answer of the 
people to Moses, " All that Jehovah hath 
spoken we will do," was gladly reported by 
him to the Lord, who then answered that on 
the third following day He would appear in 
glory upon the mountain, in the sight of all 
the people, to deliver in person the laws to 
which he required obedience. Against that 
time the people were to purify themselves, 
and wash their clothes, that they might ap- 
pear worthily before their King. Moses bore 
this intelligence to the people, and it was 
arranged that they should on that day come 
forth from the camp, and stand, in an orderly 
manner, around the base of the mountain ; 
and barriers were set up lest any rash persons 
should break through to look upon Jehovah, 
and so perish. 

The eventful day arrived, being the fifth 
day of that month, and the fiftieth after the 
departure from Egypt. The morning was 
ushered in with terrible thunders and light- 
nings, and a thick cloud rested upon the 
mountain-top. There was heard a sound 
like that of a trumpet, but so exceedingly 
loud that the people trembled greatly. They 
were then drawn out, and stood around the 
mountain, "to meet with God." They found 
the mountain wholly enveloped in fire, and 
smoke, and thick darkness; for God had 
descended in fire upon the mountain, which 
quaked beneath his feet. No figure or simi- 
litude appeared, but a Yoice was heard from 
amidst the thick clouds, giving utterance to 
the words which form the Decalogue. So 
awful and tremendous was the scene, that all 
the people, and even Moses himself, feared 
exceedingly and trembled — the more espe- 
cially when they heard that Voice which 
they had not deemed that mortal man could 
hear and still live. They drew back from 
the mountain, and entreated Moses that they 



140 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book II. 



might no more hear what they had heard, or 
see such things as they had seen ; and desired 
that he would himself draw nigh, and hear 
what else Jehovah, their God, might say, 
and report it to them, and they would be 
obedient, — " But let not God speak with us, 
lest we die." They then retired still farther 
from the mountain, and Moses advanced to 
the thick darkness where God was. Then 
the Lord said to him, " I have heard the 
voice of the words of this people which they 
have spoken unto thee : they have well said 
all that they have spoken. that there were 
such a heart in them, that they would fear Me, 
and keep all my commandments always, that it 
might be well with them, and with their children 
for ever! For I will raise them up a Prophet, 
from among their brethren, like unto thee, 
and will put my words in his mouth ; and 
he shall speak unto them all that I shall 
command him : and it shall come to pass 
that whosoever will not hearken unto my 
words, which he shall speak in my name, 
I will require it of him."* After he had 
heard these tender expressions, which so 
strongly exhibit God in his paternal cha- 
racter, and this promise, which is replete 
with significance to those who believe that 
Jesus Christ is the " Prophet " therein fore- 
told, Moses returned to the people to dismiss 
them to their tents ; after which, as required, 
he returned to the mountain, to receive from 
the Lord the fundamental laws and institu- 
tions by which the chosen people were in 
future to be governed. 

On this first occasion Moses received a 
number of civil laws; and as they referred 
chiefly to the settled life which the Israelites 
as yet had only in prospect, the promise of 
the heritage in Canaan was renewed, with 
the intimation that no sudden expulsion of 
the present inhabitants of that land was 
within the Divine intention ; but that they 
would be expelled by degrees, in proportion 
as the increasing population of the Hebrews 
might enable them to occupy the lands va- 
cated by the Canaanites. 

Moses returned to the camp to make this 
communication to the people. They promised 
obedience to the laws, which he then commu- 

* Deut. v. and xviii. 

L . ~ — . — — — . 



nicated to them. Then Moses wrote down all 
the words which the Lord had spoken ; and, 
the next morning early, proceeded to build 
an altar at the foot of the mountain, and to 
set up twelve stones, corresponding to the 
number of the tribes. After sacrifices had 
been offered upon the altar, Moses took the 
book in which he had written down laws and 
promises which had already been received, 
and read them aloud to the people ; and 
when they had again declared their formal 
assent to the terms of this covenant, he took 
the blood of the sacrifices, and sprinkled it 
over them, saying, " Behold the blood of the 
covenant, which Jehovah has made with you 
concerning all these words." 

After this, Moses, as he had been directed, 
ascended again into the mountain, attended 
by Joshua, and accompanied by Aaron, Nadab 
and Abihu (two of his sons), and seventy of 
the elders of Israel. They entered not into 
the thick cloud ; but, although they paused 
far below it, they were allowed to obtain a 
glimpse of that glory of the God of Israel 
which the cloud concealed. That which they 
beheld was but — speaking after the manner 
of meu — the place of His feet, but it appeared 
" as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, 
and as it were the body of heaven in its 
clearness." 

They ate together, there upon the moun- 
tain, on the meat of the peace-offerings which 
they had lately sacrificed, and on which the 
people were feasting in the plain below. 

Moses was then called up into the clouded 
summit of the mountain. Before he went 
he desired those who had come with him 
to remain there until his return, and then 
proceeded, with Joshua, into the cloud. To 
the people in the plain, the higher part of 
the mountain seems at this time to have ex- 
hibited the appearance of being invested by 
a thick and dark cloud, while from the very 
top arose a large body of " devouring fire."t 
For six days Moses and Joshua remained 
under the cloud ; but on the seventh day 
Moses was called to the very top, to which 
he went, leaving Joshua, probably, below. 
He there received instructions for the esta- 
blishment of a priesthood, and the construc- 

t That is, fire in action, flaming, raging. 



j CHAP. IV.] 



SINAI. 



141 



tion of a tabernacle, with laws concerning 
the Sabbath, and some other matters ; and, 
in the end, he received two tablets of stone, 
on which God had written the words of those 
ten principal laws which he had previously 
proclaimed in the hearing of all the people. 

Moses remained in the mountain forty days, 
during which he was divinely sustained, so as 
to feel no need of food. This long stay was 
probably unexpected by himself, and certainly 
was so by the friends he had left below, who, 
after some stay, how long we know not, grew 
tired of waiting longer, and returned to 
the camp. As the time passed, and nothing 
further was heard of Moses, the people be- 
came anxious and alarmed, and at last con- 
cluded that he had perished in that "devour- 
ing fire " that shone upon the mountain-top. 
Having, as they deemed, lost the leader, in 
whom they appear to have had as much con- 
fidence as they were capable of giving, they 
seem to have conceived that they were at 
liberty to construct their religious and civil 
system according to their own fancies ; or, 
perhaps, surrounded, as their course was, by 
difficulties which they had not energy to 
meet, they contemplated a return to Egypt, 
calculating, perhaps, that a voluntary return, 
together with the death of their deliverer, 
would procure them a favourable reception 
in that country. The first act which occurred 
to them would have seemed a very suitable 
preparation for such a movement ; at any 
late, it exhibited strongly the Egyptian ten- 
dencies of their minds — the effects of that 
influence which, whether for good or (as in 
this instance) for evil, a civilised and accom- 
plished people must always exercise upon 
any less accomplished and civilised people 
with whom they are, or have been, in contact. 
To appreciate this influence properly, in the 
case of the Hebrews, is to obtain the key to 
much which might otherwise seem obscure 
in the early national history of that people. 

The Israelites had but lately heard God, 
from amid the lightnings, forbid that any 
image should be made for worship ; and al- 
though that Voice, which " shook the heavens," 
had filled their souls with dread, and might 
still seem to ring in their ears, they now ap- 
plied tumultuously to Aaron, saying, "Up, 



make us a god to go before us ; for as for 
this Moses, the man that brought us up out 
of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is 
become of him." Perhaps these expressions 
were not intended to be disrespectful to Moses, 
though from the difference of the Hebrew 
idiom they may seem so to us. At all events, 
in applying to Aaron {who had not yet, that 
they knew, been appointed to the priesthood) 
they recognised the authority which Moses 
had delegated, during his own absence, to 
him and to Hur. It is not by any means to 
be understood that the demand which they 
made, conveyed a rejection of Jehovah, the 
God of their fathers, whose wonders they had 
so lately witnessed, and by whose bounty they 
were still fed from day to day. It appears 
very evident from all that passed, that what 
they wanted was a symbolical representation 
of him, after the Egyptian fashion — a con- 
secrated image to which they might render 
worship. Their minds were too gross to take 
in the idea of God apart from an image which 
might seem to embody and concentrate his 
presence. Even the sensible manifestations 
of his presence which Jehovah had afforded, 
and which was indeed still before their eyes, 
was not sufficient for them. They must have 
a representative image ; but this God had 
strictly forbidden, knowing how easily the to- 
leration of any image might lead them into 
the worship of other gods. All this was well 
known to Aaron : yet, wanting the moral 
courage of his brother, and fearing, perhaps, 




[Apis — The Golden Calf.] 



142 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II 



that a refusal from him might lead them to 
transfer to another that authority which they 
were at present disposed to recognise in him, 
he had the culpable weakness to comply with 
their desires. But he required that they 
should contribute the ear-pendants of the 
women and children, possibly calculating 
that the reluctance of the women to part 
with these ornaments might occasion delay 
or difficulty ; but, if so, he was mistaken. 
The ear-pendants were promptly collected, 
and given to him. He gave them to the 
founders (Egyptians, probably), who very 
quickly transformed them into a golden 
image, bearing the familiar figure of a calf 
— or rather a young bull, — no doubt in imita- 
tion of the Egyptian Apis, without the ex- 
ample of which this was not the representa- 
tive symbol of the Deity Avhich they were 
the most likely to have found. In setting 
up this idol, Aaron was careful to keep it 
in the minds of the people that it was but 
a symbolical figure of the true God. He 
recognised it with the words, " This is thy 
God, Israel ! that brought thee out of 
the land of Egypt," and proceeded to pro- 
claim a feast to Jehovah for the next day. 
On that day a large majority of the people 
concurred in offering burnt-offerings* and 
peace-offerings f before the "golden calf," 
upon the altar which Aaron had caused to 
be made ; and after the unhallowed sacrifice, 
they rose up for singing and dancing, and 
wanton play, according to the practice of the 
Egyptians in some of the services of Apis, 
or rather of Osiris, whom the bull Apis 
represented. 

At that very time Moses, still in the mount, 
was commanded to descend to the people, in 
language which made their sin and the Divine 
indignation known to him. He hastened 
down, and in his descent was joined by the 
faithful Joshua, who had waited patiently 
for him. As they went down together, the 
noise from the camp reached their ears ; and 
Joshua, whose ideas were of a military cha- 
racter, supposed it the sound of war. But 

* " Burnt-offerings"— Offerings entirely consumed upon 
the altar. 

■f " Peace-offerings."— Offerings in which certain parts 
only were consumed on the altar, the rest being eaten by 
the offerers. 



Moses answered, " It is not the voice of them 
that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice 
of them that cry for being overcome ; but the 
noise of them that sing do I hear." 

When they came near enough to notice 
the calf and the dancing before it, the anger 
of Moses was so excited, that he threw from 
his hands the tablets of stone which he had 
received from God, and brake them in pieces 
beneath the mountain, intending, probably, 
thereby to intimate that, in like manner, the 
recent covenant between God and them Avas 
broken on their part, and, in consequence, 
rescinded on His. Then he advanced to the 
golden calf, which they had made, " and 
burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, 
and strawed it upon the water, and made the 
Israelites drink of it," — thus adding disgust 
to ignominy ; for gold thus treated is of a 
most abominable taste. 

After thus destroying the idol he proceeded 
to the punishment of the idolaters themselves. 
He stood at one of the entrances to the camp 
and cried, " Who is on Jehovah's side 1 Let 
him come unto me!" and in answer, all the 
men of his own tribe — that of Levi — gathered 
around him. These he ordered to go from one 
end of the camp to the other, sword in hand, 
and slay every one who persisted in his idola- 
try, without favour or affection either to their 
neighbour or their brother. They obeyed him; 
and 3000 men fell that day by their hands. 
Nor was this all ; for the Lord sent plagues 
among the people, to punish them further for 
this great offence. 

It was on this occasion that Moses was 
enabled to manifest his love for his people 
by his urgent intercessions with the Lord 
on their behalf ; as well as the noble disin- 
terestedness of his own character, by his re- 
fusal of the tempting offer from God to adopt 
his family in their room, and to "make of 
him a great nation." He prayed that the 
Almighty would " blot him out of his book," 
or take his life away, unless He would forgive 
" the great sin of his people." In the end he 
prevailed with Go'', not only to receive them 
again into his favour, but to rescind the in- 
tention which had been intimated of with- 
drawing his own presence from them, and of 
sending an inferior angel to conduct them 




THE TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS. 




JACOB'S WELL. 



CHAP. IV.] 

to the land of promise, and to drive out the 
Canaanites before them. It is but just to 
add that the intimation of this last purpose 
threw the Israelites into the utmost grief 
and consternation ; and they remained, as 
mourners, without their ornaments, until it 
was recalled. During the same time also 
Moses removed his own tent out of their 
polluted camp; and only from time to time 
went thither to make known the commands 
of God. 

When the Lord had pardoned his people 
and received them again into his favour, He 
commanded Moses to hew two tablets of 
stone, like those which he had broken, and 
to present them to him on the top of the 
mount. It was also promised to him that, 
according to his humble request, he should 
there obtain a fuller view of the glory of the 
Divine presence than he had hitherto en- 
joyed ; — as full a view as mortal man could 
see and live, but infinitely short of the actual 
glories of His presence and His throne. Ac- 
cordingly, as directed, he repaired to the 
mount with the tablets in his hands, and hid 
himself in a cleft of the rock. The Lord 
then descended upon the mountain in a 
cloud which hid the glory of his presence 
entirely from the people below, but which, 
as it passed by the place where Moses lay, 
enabled him to see as much of that glory as 
flesh and blood could bear: but what he 
did see, he, with proper and reverent reserve, 
abstains from describing ; only we know that 
as the veiled glory passed by, a Voice was 
heard proclaiming, "Jehovah, Jehovah, a 
God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, 
and abounding in goodness and truth. Keep- 
ing mercy to a thousand generations : forgiving 
iniquity and transgression and sin ; and that 
will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, 
and upon the children's children, unto the 
third or fourth generation" 

Moses again remained forty days in the 
mount, without meat or drink. At the end 
of that time he received back the tablets of 
stone, written over with the same words 
which the broken tablets had contained— 
the ten commandments; and this was pro- 
bably intended as a token of the renewal of 



143 

the covenant between God and the Hebrew 
people. Moses knew not that he had re- 
ceived a ray of that surpassing glory which 
had shone upon him, by virtue of which his 
countenance beamed with such heavenly 
light that Aaron and all the people, when he 
came down, were afraid to approach him. 
This light remained upon his countenance, 
and was so dazzling, that he found it con- 
venient to cover his face with a veil in his 
general intercourse with the people, and 
appeared unveiled only when he drew near 
to God to receive His commands, and when 
he repeated those commands to the people, 
in whose eyes his authority and importance 
w T ere, doubtless, much enhanced by this 
splendid peculiarity in his personal appear- 
ance. 

During this stay of Moses in the mount, a 
visionary pattern of the tabernacle or portable 
temple, which he had formerly been directed 
to construct, was exhibited to him, and he 
was commanded to carry into effect the in- 
structions he had received, all proceedings 
thereon having been prevented by the late 
unhappy circumstances. 

The plan of the new establishment was 
highly acceptable to the Israelites, and they 
entered into it with great eagerness and zeal. 
It held out to them the prospect of a splendid 
temple, with costly utensils, and with a 
numerous priestly caste, the chief of them 
gorgeously arrayed, to present incense, and 
offerings, and sacrifices. A splendid ritual 
they had been accustomed to admire and (as 
we learn from various intimations) to imitate 
in Egypt ; and this admiration and imitation 
had but lately led them into a very great 
sin. The new establishment must therefore 
be to some extent regarded as a concession 
to the notions of a people, who, like all 
others at that time, were incapable of under- 
standing that purely spiritual worship which 
God himself would have counted of the most 
value. It is, indeed, easy to see that a 
people circumstanced as the Israelites were, 
and imbued as they were with Egyptian 
notions, might be the more easily kept in 
the right way through a splendid ritual 
directed to the proper object; while by a 
rigid interdiction of all these ceremonies 



SINAI. 



144 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



and acts, and apparatus of worship, which 
existed in other nations, such a people would 
stand exposed to very great danger of being 
corrupted or drawn aside from their own 
more severe and simple system. As a matter 
of mere human policy, therefore, it was, in 
the first instance, probable that such ritual 
institutions would be given to this people. 
But although we see that there was in these 
institutions much of concession to the in- 
eradicable notions of the people for whom 
they were designed, they were so framed as 
to comprehend great ulterior objects, and to 
realize the largest amount of religious and 
political good which could possibly be derived 
from them. 

No sooner were the Israelites made ac- 
quainted with the materials which would be 
required for the works of the tabernacle and 
its contents, and for the dresses and orna- 
ments of the priests, than they poured in, 
with the most profuse liberality, whatever 
suitable articles they possessed : so that in a 
very short time Moses was obliged to have 
it proclaimed throughout the camp, that no 
more offerings were to be made for the sanc- 
tuary, as there was already enough, and 
more than enough for every purpose. The 
list of the articles contributed is very in- 
teresting, not only as showing the large 
quantity, but the nature and quality, of the 
wealth in their possession, and all of which 
they had probably brought from Egypt. 
These consisted chiefly of articles in brass, 
silver, and gold, intended to be melted down 
for the service required, together with 
precious stones, costly woods, rich stuffs, 
skms, oils, incense, and spices. The women 
were eminently distinguished on this occasion. 
They contributed their personal ornaments 
and trinkets ; while their mirrors, of polished 
brass, were given up to form the brazen 
laver. Among all pastoral nations, the duty 
of forming into cloth the wool of the sheep, 
and the hair of the goat, devolves upon the 
women, and forms the principal occupation 
of their lives ; and on the present occasion 
the women of Israel were busied in spinning, 
twisting, and weaving the clothes required 
for the hangings of the tabernacle. 

When we consider that all the offerings 



were voluntary, with the exception of the 
small sum of half a shekel of silver, levied 
upon every male above twenty years of age, 
and yet find that the whole contribution of 
gold and silver only was worth about 185,000^. 
of our money, we shall have a strong idea, 
not only of the willing zeal of the Israelites, 
but of the splendour of the small fabric on 
which so much wealth was expended. 

The practical director of all the work was 
an ingenious man of the tribe of Judah, 
Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur ; and 
with him was Aholiah, the son of Ahisamach, 
of the tribe of Dan, an engraver, and de- 
signer, and embroiderer in blue, and in 
purple, and in scarlet, and in cotton*. It is 
so far satisfactory, that these curious, and for 
the age, interesting works were not executed 
under the direction of Egyptians, although it is 
not unlikely that the skill of such of that nation 
as were in the camp was made available in 
some of the practical operations ; but there 
can be no question that Bezaleel and Aholiah 
had been instructed in Egypt in that know- 
ledge which qualified them for the service 
they undertook. No one will, at the present 
day, contend that the Hebrews could know 
anything of the finer arts, but what they had 
learnt of the Egyptians during their sojourn 
and bondage in Egypt. And in this point 
of view the costly and ingenious works which 
were executed in the desert throw much 
light upon the state of the arts in that early 
age among the Egyptians, while they illus- 
trate the extent of the obligations of the 
Israelites, in the finer arts of life, to that 
ingenious people. The information thus 
supplied is perfectly in agreement with that 
which the sculptured and painted remains 
of ancient Egypt now offer to us. 

Such was the earnestness of all parties, 
that the tabernacle, with all its rich fur- 
niture, and costly apparatus, together with 
the splendid dress of the high priests, and 
the robes of the common priests, were all 
completed in less than six months. The 
tabernacle was erected, and all things con- 
nected with it disposed in proper order on 
the first day of the second year of the de- 
parture from Egypt. The Levites were then 

* Exodus xxxv. 35. 



CHAP. IV.] £ 

set apart as a sacerdotal and learned caste, 
like the priestly caste in Egypt ; and out of 
this caste the family of Aaron was solemnly 
consecrated to the higher offices of the 
priesthood — Aaron himself being appointed 
the high priest. When all was finished, the 
glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle ; and 
the more public and outward sign of his 
presence, the pillar of cloud — that pillar 
which became a blaze of fire by night — rested 
upon it. The setting of the whole in order 
probably occupied a week ; for it was not 
until the eighth day of the month that the 
regular services of the splendid ritual were 
commenced by the new high priest, who then 
offered upon the great altar the various kinds 
of sacrifices which the law required. In 
token of divine acceptance and complacency, 
a fire darted forth from that " glory " which 
represented the Lord's presence, and con- 
sumed the burnt offering. When the people 
saw this, " they shouted, and fell upon their 
faces." It was afterwards directed that the 
fire thus miraculously kindled should be 
kept up and employed in all the sacred 
services. 

It seems to have been shortly after this 
that the chiefs of each tribe came, on suc- 
cessive days, and appeared before Moses and 
Aaron with a very considerable offering for 
the sacred service, contained in six carts, 
each drawn by two oxen — in all, seventy-two 
carts. The offering of every chief was pre- 
cisely the same, consisting of a silver platter, 
weighing five pounds five ounces, troy; a 
silver sprinkling basin, of about three pounds, 
and a golden incense pot, of about five 
ounces. Besides this, their offering contained 
fine flour and incense, together with several 
animals, for a feast-offering. Their donations 
were received by Moses and Aaron, and set 
aside for the service of the tabernacle. 

Not long after this a grievous calamity 
befel the priestly family. Kadab and Abihu, 
the two eldest sons of Aaron — those who 
were with Moses in the mount — went into 
the tabernacle to offer incense, having in 
their censers common fire, instead of that 
hallowed fire which had been miraculously 
kindled on the altar of burnt offering. This 
neglect was punished by a fire [perhaps 



145 



lightning] from the Lord, which struck them 
dead on the spot, without injuring their 
robes, or the exterior of their persons. This 
may seem harsh; but it was obviously 
necessary at the commencement of these 
institutions that their sanctity should be 
protected, and the highest reverence for the 
divine presence inculcated, at whatever cost. 
" Holy will I be accounted," said the Lord 
on this occasion, " by those who approach 
me ; and before all the people will I be glo- 
rified."* Aaron was silent. Moses ordered 
the bodies of his nephews to be carried 
outside the camp, and buried without any 
mourning or funeral ceremony. It is pro- 
bable that the sin of Nadab and Abihu was 
caused and aggravated by drunkenness ; for, 
immediately after this the Lord spoke to 
Aaron, forbidding that he or his sons should 
drink wine, or strong drink, when they were 
to officiate in the tabernacle, lest they died ; 
suggesting that Nadab and Abihu had done 
so, and had died for it. All these circum- 
stances appear to have occurred in the first 
month of the second year of the departure 
from Egypt. 

At the beginning of the next month, 
Moses was directed to take a census of the 
adult male population — that is, of the men 
above twenty years of age, fit to bear arms. 
The reason for this probably was, that the 
last census (which enabled the historian to 
state that the number of such persons who 
left Egypt was 600,000) had been taken by 
the Egyptians, and was perhaps some years 
old. Moses and Aaron were assisted in this 
undertaking by twelve persons of considera- 
tion — heads of families — one from each tribe. 
The result of this census is valuable, from 
the information it gives of the relative nu- 
merical importance of the several tribes; 
thus, — 
Reuben 
Simeon 



Gad . 

Judah 

Issachar 

Zebulon 

Ephraim 

Manasseh 



* Leviticus, x. 



46,500 
59,300 
45,650 
74,600 
54,400 
57,400 
40,500 
32,200 



L 



146 THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



Benjamin ..... 5,400 

Dan 62,700 

Asher . . . . . 41,500 

Naphtali . . . . 53,400 

Total . . . 603,550 
But as the Levites were not destined to bear 
arms, they are not included in this com- 
putation ; but from an enumeration of that 
tribe taken for another purpose, we learn 
that the males above a month old did not 
exceed 22,273, so that the number of adult 
males of that tribe could hardly have been 
one-half that of the lowest of the other tribes. 

When the population had thus been num- 
bered, a regular organization of the camp 
was instituted. The whole host was formed 
into four great divisions, each consisting of 
three tribes, and taking its name from the 
principal tribe. These were to encamp, under 
their several banners, so as to form a hollow 
square, in the centre of which was the taber- 
nacle, immediately around which the Levites 
were to encamp. The east side of the square 
was formed by the camp of Judah — con- 
taining the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and 
Zebulon : Ephraim, with Manasseh and Ben- 
jamin, was on the west : on the north were 
Dan, Asher, and Naphtali ; and on the south, 
Reuben, Simeon, and Gad. This beautiful 
and orderly arrangement attracted the ad- 
miration of strangers, as we may gather 
from the exclamation of Baalam, — " How 
goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy 
tabernacles, O Israel ! " 

It was also directed that in their removals 
the eastern division should first leave the 
ground, followed by the southern division, 
and that by the tabernacle, while the west 
and north divisions were to succeed in the 
rear. The removal of the pillar of cloud was 
to be the signal for their removal, and its 
resting for their rest. 

During the protracted stay at this place, 
Moses was favoured with frequent intercourse 
with God, in which he received the body of 
laws which bear his name, and which were 
delivered not in any regular or systematic 
form but as occasion seemed to require or 
suggest. At first Moses received the com- 



[book II. 

mand from the Lord upon the mountain, 
under the circumstance of great solemnity, 
which we have recorded. After his second 
stay of forty days upon the mountain, it 
does not appear that he again repaired 
thither to receive the divine commands. 
The next form in which these awful inter- 
views were conducted commenced before this 
last visit to Sinai, and appears to have con- 
tinued until the erection of the tabernacle. 
After the sin in the matter of the golden 
calf, Moses, it will be remembered, removed 
his tent to a considerable distance from the 
camp, and called it the Convention tent. 
He seems to have resided there for a time ; 
and if we rightly collect the meaning of the 
sacred narrative, after this sin had been 
forgiven, he returned to live in the camp, 
but left this tent standing, under the charge 
of Joshua, who was always there. Whenever 
Moses went to consult the Lord, or to receive 
his commands, he proceeded to this tent; 
and when he entered the tent, the pillar of 
cloud descended and stood at the door, while 
the Lord spoke therefrom to Moses. When- 
ever Moses left the camp to proceed to this 
tent, the people came to the doors of their 
own tents, and followed him with their eyes 
until he entered the tent ; and when they saw 
the pillar of cloud come and settle at the 
door, they all arose and worshipped, every 
one at the door of his own tent*. After the 
erection of the tabernacle, Moses entered it 
whenever he sought counsel of God ; and 
then he heard a Voice speaking to him from 
between the cherubim above the ark, in the 
most holy place. 

It seems to have been about this timet 
that Jethro, the Midianite, the father-in-law 
of Moses, found out that the famous prophet 
through whom the Lord had delivered Israel 
from the bondage of Egypt, was no other 

* Exod. xxxiii. 7 — 11. 

f The chapter which records this visit (Exod. xviii.) is 
placed between that which records the arrival at Rephidim 
and the victory over the Amalekites, and that which re- 
cords the encampment at Sinai, suggesting that Jethro 
came while the Hebrews were at Rephidim. But Light- 
foot has shown, from the clearest internal evidence and 
the historical connection, that the account of Jethro's 
visit is not related in the order of time — which order would 
have given it the place which we assign it in our narrative. 
—See Lightfoot's ' Harmony under A.M. 2515.' 



CHAP. IY.] 



SINAI. 



147 



than the husband of his daughter. No sooner 
did he learn this than he set forth, with his 
son Hobab, to convey to him his wife and 
two sons. They were all received very affec- 
tionately by Moses, who took his father-in- 
law to his tent, and gave him a full account 
of all which had occurred since their sepa- 
ration. And when the old man heard of the 
wonders which had been wrought for the 
deliverance of Israel, he blessed Jehovah, 
and acknowledged that he now knew him to 
be greater than all other gods. This sort of 
expression may imply that he had previously 
rendered him a divided worship, and, after 
all, falls short of the true Hebrew belief. 
That there was no God but Jehovah was 
that belief; but we see, always, that the 
highest point of doctrine which even the best 
of men, not Hebrews, could reach, was, that 
Jehovah was the greatest of the gods. Among 
the great differences of opinion and shades of 
belief, this was a broad and important dis- 
tinction. In accordance with this conviction, 
Jethro delayed not to present to Jehovah 
burnt offerings and other sacrifices ; after 
which Aaron and the elders of Israel came 
to pay their respects to the father-in-law of 
Moses, and to eat with him of the feast 
offerings. 

During his stay in the camp, Jethro was 
much struck to observe the fatigue and 
anxiety which Moses underwent in sitting 
all day surrounded by a crowd of people to 
hear their complaints, and settle their dif- 
ferences, according to the statutes which had 
lately been promulgated. He warned him 
that this labour was too heavy for him, and 
that he could not with safety continue to 
perform it alone; and his judicious advice 
was, that he should commit their common 
and daily affairs to faithful and just men, 
who should, according to their ability, be 
appointed to act in regular subordination 



over the subdivisions of the people into thou- 
sands, hundreds, fifties, and tens — Moses 
himself withdrawing into the more high and 
distant place of one before whom only matters 
too difficult for the decision of the inferior 
judges were to be brought. 

Moses saw the wisdom of this advice, and 
proceeded to act upon it. He stated to the 
people his inability to bear the burdensome 
charge of them and their contentions, and 
directed them to make choice, in their several 
tribes, of persons of known wisdom and 
prudence, whom he might appoint to be 
their rulers. They answered, "The thing 
which thou hast spoken is good for us to do ;" 
and afterwards, in appointing the persons of 
whom they had made choice, he gave them 
an admirable charge, and instructed them 
fully in the duties they were to perform*. 

Knowing they were about to journey in 
the wilderness of Paran, Moses was very 
anxious to engage his brother-in-law, Hobab, 
not to return to Midian with his father, but 
to remain and act as the guide of the 
Israelites through the wilderness ; for al- 
though the guidance of the cloudy pillar was 
sufficient to indicate their general course, 
and the places for their encampments, it does 
not appear that its directions were so minute 
as to render the services of a person ac- 
quainted with the country of no value, 
especially in pointing out the places where 
water and fuel might be obtained. Hobab 
at first manifested some reluctance, which 
was at last overcome by the assurance that 
he should freely participate in the benefits 
which the Lord had promised to Israel. 

* Compare Exod. xviii. with Deut. i. 9— 18. From the 
ninth verse of this last passage it appears that the institu- 
tion was proposed to the people, and adopted at the very 
time that their approaching departure from Sinai was made 
known to them. This of course confirms the place we 
have assigned to the transaction in our narrative. 



148 



THE BIBLE HIST0EY. 



[book II. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE WANDERING. 



The Israelites remained at the foot of 
Mount Sinai eleven months and nineteen 
days. During this time the necessary laws 
were given; the tabernacle was set up for 
the palace of the King, Jehovah ; the regular 
service of his court was established; the 
sanctions of the law were solemnly repeated ; 
the people were numbered and mustered for 
the approaching war ; the order of their 
encamping, breaking up, and marching, was 
accurately settled ; and the whole con- 
stitution of the state was completed. 

On the twentieth day of the second month 
of the second year after their departure from 
Egypt, the Israelites were ordered to break 
up their encampment, and proceed on their 
march, to take possession of the Promised 
Land. 

Under the direction of the miraculous 
cloud, the ark went on in advance, to deter- 
mine the line of march, and the places of 
encampment. When, at any time, the ark, 
following the movements of the pillared 
cloud, began to set forward, Moses was wont 
to exclaim, "Arise, Jehovah, and let 
thine enemies be scattered; and let them 
that hate thee flee before thee ! " And when, 
under the same guidance, it rested, " Return, 
Jehovah, unto the many thousands of 
Israel ! " 

The general and leading command to 
depart for Sinai appears to have been orally 
delivered ; but on other removals, consequent 
on that general direction, it was a sufficient 
intimation of the command to remove, when 
the miraculous cloud withdrew from off the 
tabernacle, and moved forward. Whenever 
this was noticed, the several tribes struck 
their tents, and began to pack up their 
moveables, while the priests and Levites 
were engaged in taking down the tabernacle, 
and in disposing its parts on the carriages 
in which they were to be removed; and 
others covered up, and otherwise prepared 
for removal, the ark, the altars, the table of 



S shew-bread, and the chandelier, which were 
to be borne on the shoulders of the Levites. 
! All this would probably occasion but little 
j delay ; for the rapidity and ease with which 
J the pastoral nations strike their tents, and 
get ready for a march, is quite astonishing 
to those who dwell in towns. When all was 
ready, the repeated sounding of the silver 
trumpets notified the time when each of the 
four camps was to move off the ground, in 
the order noticed in a preceding page ; each 
tribe under its own banner and chiefs. As 
the tabernacle and the sacred utensils pro- 
ceeded in the earlier part of the line, all was 
set up and properly arranged at the new 
encampment before the rear arrived on the 
ground ; and, indeed, as the several tribes 
certainly encamped as they arrived, the 
greater part of the encampment would be 
formed by the time that the rearward tribe 
came up to take its place. 

Several serious occurrences took place 
during the march through the desert to the 
borders of Canaan ; and all tending, more or 
less, to manifest the intractable and de- 
bilitated character which their long-con- 
tinued, and still recent, servitude had pro- 
duced in the Hebrews ; and which a slavery 
imposing personal obligations always has 
produced. The true secret of much of their 
conduct was that they had no public spirit — 
none of that spirit which enables men to 
understand the necessity of making unusual 
exertions, and of undergoing great priva- 
tions, for the attainment of the high objects 
set before them. Wanting this, they looked 
upon their leaders as children look towards 
their parents — as those who were bound to 
keep them in all comfort, and to make the 
paths they trod smooth and easy for them. 

For nearly twelve months they had now 
remained much at their ease in the Sinai 
valleys, without any other general labour 
than the care of their flocks. As soon, there- 
fore, as they had passed beyond the pleasant 



and shady valleys of the peninsula, and were 
fairly engaged in the stern and naked desert, 
they began to complain of the hardships and 
fatigues of the journey, and of the obligation 
of decamping and encamping so often. At 
the third stage these murmurs became so 
strong that their Divine King judged some 
afflictive mark of his displeasure necessary ; 
wherefore he caused a fire (probably kindled 
by lightning) to break forth, and rage with 
great fury among the tents on the outskirts 
of the camp. In this the people recognised 
the hand of God, and interceded with Moses, 
at whose prayer the flames subsided. In 
memory of this the place received the name 
of Taberah [the burning]. 

It will be remembered that there were a 
considerable number of Egyptian vagabonds 
and other foreigners (probably runaway 
slaves) in the Hebrew host. The next affair, 
which seems to have followed the former 
very soon, commenced among these dangerous 
characters, but soon involved the mass of the 
Israelites. They became discontented with 
the manna. Pleasant though it were, the 
sameness of their diet disgusted them, and, 
heedless of the necessity of their circum- 
stances, they longed for the palatable va- 
rieties of food which they had enjoyed in 
Egypt. The excellent meats of that country, 
and the abundant fish of its river — the 
luscious and cooling melons, the onions, the 
leeks, the garlick, and other fruits and 
vegetables of that rich soil, they had all 
been accustomed to eat "freely," so abundant 
were they, and so cheap. That they should 
grow tired of one particular kind of food, 
however delicious, when they had been used 
to such variety, and that they should look 
back upon their former enjoyments with 
some degree of longing and regret, is quite 
natural, and might not be blameworthy ; but 
nothing can more strikingly show the un- 
manly character which bondage had produced 
in the then existing race of Hebrews, than 
that such merely sensual impulses were able 
to gain the mastery over them to such a 
degree as utterly to blind and confound their 
understanding. With childish weeping and 
unreasoning clamour they expressed their 
longing for the lost pleasures of Egypt, and 



their distaste of the manna, which had for 
so many months formed their principal food. 
As this clamour broke out so soon after the 
departure from the Sinai valleys in which 
they had so long been encamped, it seems 
very likely that they had secretly enter- 
tained the expectation that a change of scene 
would bring a change of food, and that they 
were much disappointed to find that the 
manna, and that only, continued to be sup- 
plied wherever they w r ent. 

The conduct of the people on this occasion 
was deeply displeasing to God: and Moses 
manifested more than usual discouragement 
and annoyance. His address to God on this 
occasion shows this, and is not altogether 
free from fretfulness. He rather murmurs 
at the heavy task which had been imposed 
upon him, of managing this unreasoning 
multitude, and declares himself unequal to 
it. In answer to this, God proposed to 
strengthen his authority by a council of 
seventy elders, to whom a portion of his own 
spirit should be formally given; and as to 
the people, a promise was indignantly made 
them, that on the morrow, and for a month 
to come, they should eat meat to the full. 
In reply to some doubts, which Moses ven- 
tured to intimate, as to the feasibility of 
supplying so large a multitude, the emphatic 
answer was, "Is the Lord's hand waxed 
short?" 

Accordingly, on the next day the seventy 
elders were assembled about the door of the 
tabernacle, when the Lord, as he had pro- 
mised, "came down in a cloud, and spake 
unto Moses ; and took of the spirit that was 
upon him, and gave it unto the seventy 
elders;" not that thereby the divine spirit 
in Moses sustained any diminution, for, as 
the rabbins aptly illustrate, he was as "a 
burning and a shining light," from which 
many other lights might be kindled without 
its own brilliancy being lessened. And when 
the Seventy had received this spirit, they 
began to prophesy, — not in the sense of 
foretelling things to come, but of speaking 
on Divine things with some of that spon- 
taneous fervour and eloquence which had 
hitherto been peculiar to Moses. 

This council having been appointed for the 



150 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



express purpose of assisting Moses in the dis- 
charge of the arduous duties of his peculiar 
office, died with him. In the history of the 
succeeding periods, there is not the slightest 
mention of such a council, not even in those 
times when it must hare acted a most import- 
ant part, had it been in existence. When there 
was no chief magistrate, the whole business 
of the government would have belonged, 



which they had become acquainted in 

Egypt- 

In the very height of their gormandising, 
or, as the Scripture expresses it, " while the 
flesh was yet between their teeth," a grievous 
plague was sent among them, whereby great 
numbers were destroyed. It is probable that 
the very indulgence for which they had 
longed was made the instrument of their 



properly, to this council of state. But we I punishment, and that the extraordinarv 



find no trace of such a council in the history 
of those times. There were also transactions 
of the deepest interest to the Hebrew com- 
monwealth, in which such a council, if it had 
existed, could not fail to have been actively 
engaged ; and if so engaged, it is incredible 
that the several historians should have agreed 
in that profound silence concerning it which 
they have observed. The rabbins, therefore, 
are not entitled to credit, when they assert 
that the council instituted by Moses con- 
tinued uninterrupted to the latest times 
after the captivity, and that the same insti- 
tution was perpetuated in the /Sanhedrim, 
which existed after the times of the Mac- 



The same day came the promised supply 
of meat — given not in kindness but in anger. 
As on a former occasion it consisted of im- 
mense flocks of quails, which, being wearied 
with their flight across the Red Sea, flew so 
low and heavily that vast quantities of them 
were easily caught by the people. So abun- 
dant was the supply that not only were they 
enabled to glut themselves for the time, but 
to collect a quantity for future use. We are 
told that " they spread them all abroad for 
themselves round about the camp." This 
was, perhaps, to let them dry, or to allow the 
salt to settle before they potted them away. 
We are not accustomed to hear of birds being 
preserved in any way, but it is remarkable 
that Herodotus* describes it as usual among 
the Egyptians to eat, undressed, quails, 
ducks, and small birds which they had pre- 
served with salt. This is confirmed by the 
sculptures, where men are represented as in 
the act of preserving birds in this manner, 
and depositing them in jars. No doubt the 
Hebrews followed the same process, with 

* Herod, ii. 77. 



mortality was, under the Divine control, 
occasioned by the excess of the people in the 
use of a kind of food so different from that 
on which they had for so many previous 
months been principally fed. 

From this event the place took the name 
of Kibroth-hattaavah {the graves of longing), 
because in that place were buried numbers 
of the people who had longed for flesh. 

The next principal encampment was at 
a place called Hazeroth. Here "a root of 
bitterness" sprung up, even in the very 
family of Moses. His sister Miriam, "the 
prophetess," had naturally taken the place 
of a chief woman in Israel : but when Moses 
had been joined by his wife, she began to 
feel or fear that her influence and station 
would be undermined. She therefore gave 
utterance to reflections which had the ob- 
vious tendency of throwing disgrace upon 
him for his connection with one wno was not 
a daughter of Israel, but a Oushite (or 
Arabian) stranger. This was certainly a 
disadvantageous connection for the leader of 
such a people as the Hebrews ; and, if 
brought prominently forward, and dilated 
upon in the ears of the people, was calculated 
to impair the influence of Moses, and to 
create dangerous jealousies, — the rather as 
the brother of the woman, and the clan of 
which he was the head, were present in the 
camp, and were treated with distinction and 
honour. The jealousy of Miriam is less 
strange than the fact that Aaron encouraged 
her, and sided with her. This may make us 
suspect that the cause of discontent may 
have lain deeper than appears ; and that 
both Aaron and Miriam must have been dis- 
contented at, and willing to impair, the 
superiority of their younger brother. Aaron 
could not but know that, by the theory of 



THE WANDERING. 



151 



the law, he was by virtue of his office the 
chief person in the state ; and that the 
political functions of that office remained in 
abeyance while Moses occupied that high 
and extraordinary station, which, indeed, 
the Divine appointment compelled him to fill, 
but which the law itself did not recognise as 
involved in the ordinary course of adminis- 
trative government. It is, however, less 
probable that Aaron and his sister sought to 
supersede Moses, than to obtain an equal 
share with him in the actual government of 
the people. Something of this is involved 
in their claim to be "prophets" equally with 
him. We are not told that Moses said or did 
anything on this occasion ; and this appears 
to have been remarked by some one of a later 
day, who in the original narrative has intro- 
duced the observation, " Now the man Moses 
was very meek, above all the men which 
were upon the face of the earth."* 

Nor needed "Moses take any part in the 
matter, for the Divine Voice, without any 
previous communication to him, summoned 
them all three to the door of the tabernacle. 
There Aaron and Miriam were rebuked from 
the sacred cloud, and were reminded that, 
although they had indeed been favoured with 
divine communications, yet the Lord had 
made himself known to them only in visions 
and dreams, whereas to Moses he had spoken 
mouth to mouth, openly, and not in dark 
sayings, that he might clearly perceive the 
will of Jehovah. When the voice ceased it 
was found that Miriam had been smitten 
with leprosy. On this, Aaron, greatly hum- 
bled, confessed to Moses the foolishness and 
presumption of their mutual conduct, and 
begged him to intercede with God for the 
recovery of their sister. Moses did so ; but 
as it was proper that the punishment should 
be as public as the offence, he could only 
obtain the promise that she should recover 
after she had been shut out from the camp 
seven days as a polluted leper. This was 
done: and during the seven days of her 
exclusion the camp remained stationary. 

The distance from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea, 
on the southern border of Canaan, was usually 
reckoned not more than eleven days' journey ; 

* Num. xii. 3. 



but as it was "the time of the first ripe 
grapes" when the Hebrew host arrived at 
Kadesh, they must have spent five or six 
months on this journey. 

When they reached that place Moses ap- 
prised them that they were now on the 
borders of their promised inheritance, and 
exhorted them to be of good courage in the 
acts of war by which they were to take pos- 
session. The elders gave the very judicious 
advice that, before any warlike operations 
were commenced, twelve persons, one from 
each tribe, should be sent to explore the 
country ; and this counsel, having been 
sanctioned by the Divine command, was 
carried into effect. In those days, and long- 
after, the office of a spy was counted highly 
honourable, and, as a post of danger and 
difficulty, was sought by heroes of the highest 
rankt. So, in the present instance, the 
persons chosen for this arduous service were 
all men of note, "rulers" in their several 
tribes. The charge which Moses gave them 
before they departed deserves great admira- 
tion from the skill with which, in a very few 
words, it states the points to which it was 
requisite they should direct their especial 
attention. Go up "southward, and go up 
into the mountain [Lebanon], and see the 
land what it is, and the people that dwelleth 
therein, whether they be strong or weak, few 
or many; and what the land is that they 
dwell in, whether it be good or bad ; and 
what cities they be that they dwell in, 
whether in tents or in strongholds ; and what 
the land is, whether it be fat or lean ; whether 
there be wood therein or not. And be ye of 
good courage, and bring of the fruit of the 
fand."J 

The spies appear to have accomplished 
their purpose without molestation. They 
traversed the whole extent of the country to 
Lebanon. On their return southward, they 
passed through the valley of Eshcol, where 
they were so much struck by the size and 
beauty of the vines, that they broke off a 
branch to take with them to the camp, and 
to prevent the attached clusters from being 
bruised, bore it between two on a staff. 

After an absence of forty days they re- 

t See Homer, passim. $ Num. xiii. 17—20. 



152 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



turned to the camp. The grapes, the pome- 
granates, and the figs, which they brought 
with them as specimen fruits of the promised 
land, must have formed a most gratifying 
sight to the Hebrews; for although similar 
fruits were not unknown in Egypt, they are 
far inferior both in appearance and quality 
to those of Palestine. It has indeed been 
disputed, on the authority of some ancient 
writers, that Egypt afforded any vines ; and 
if this had been true, we should have had a 
still stronger illustration of the delight with 
which the Hebrews must have beheld and 
tasted the fruit of the very excellent vines of 
Palestine. But that the vine was known in 
Egypt, and the juice of the grape expressed, 
is evinced by Gen. xl. 9 — 11, as well as by 
the paintings and sculptures of that ancient 
country, in which vineyards and vine-arbours 
are often represented, and the scenes of the 
vintage — the gathering of the grapes, and 
the treading in the wine-press— are very 
strikingly depicted, so as to convey interest- 
ing illustrations of the various allusions to 
the vintage which the sacred books contain. 

The description which the spies gave to 
their eager listeners of the country through 
which they had passed was highly favour- 
able, especially when regarded as proceeding 
from men who had been brought up in one 
of the most fertile countries in the world. 
They described it as a good land — a land 
flowing "with milk and honey." If this 
account of the land, accompanied by the 
sight of its pleasant fruits, excited the people 
to advance and take possession, their zeal 
was too speedily damped by the further 
account of the great stature, strength, and 
courage of the inhabitants, and of the lofty 
position and strong fortifications of their 
cities. 

A recent traveller informs us that on 
coming from Arabia, where the villages are, 
for the most part, found in valleys, he was 
much struck by seeing the villages and 
towns of Palestine standing loftily upon the 
hills. The same circumstance seems to have 
been strongly remarked by the Hebrew spies ; 
and their further statement respecting the 
strong walls of the towns, must be received 
with the licence which results from the fact 



that they and their auditors were Bedouins 
in their military habits and ideas, and that 
to all such people the slightest appearance 
of a wall or fortification is regarded as an 
insurmountable obstacle *. 

Although we may well believe that the 
fears of the spies magnified the stature of 
the Oanaanites, their impression must have 
had some foundation in fact. It is hence, 
and for other reasons, probable that the 
inhabitants of the land, or at least certain 
races among them, were taller, and possibly 
of larger build than either themselves or the 
Egyptians. As to the Egyptians, it appears 
from the mummies, that they were generally 
a light, medium-sized people, with very rare 
instances of a stature above the middle-size, 
or of large-boned, or muscular men; and 
with respect to the Israelites themselves, 
they were exposed to the same conditions 
which influenced the development of the 
Egyptian figure; and it may be remarked 
that the same circumstances which tended 
to promote their increase in Egypt, tended 
not less to check their growth. To this we 
may add that, even at the present day, very 
few men among the Jews rise above the 
middle European stature, while a more than 
ordinary proportion fall below it. The same 
absence of tall or large figures is also observed 
among the Arab tribes, which makes them 
appear rather a small race, although they 
generally seem to reach our medium standard. 
From this we think it may result that the 
appearance among the Canaanites of a much 
larger proportion of tall and large-built men 
than they had been accustomed to see, would 
not inadequately account for the report of 
the Hebrew spies, after due allowance has 
been made for the exaggeration which their 
fears produced. 

The people were filled with alarm by this 
account. They appear to have been unpre- 
pared to expect that any formidable obstacles 
would be opposed to their taking possession 
of the land promised to their fathers ; and, 

* " The walls of Graine [a small town at the head of the 
Persian Gulf], which were only of mud, and which, in 
the rainy season, frequently crumbled down in large 
breaches, were, nevertheless, beheld and accounted by the 
Wahabees as impregnable ramparts." Sir H. Jones 
Brydges, * Hist, of the Wahabees.' 



CHAP. V.] 



THE WANDERING. 



153 



utterly unmindful that the promises of their 
Divine King, confirmed by their past expe- 
rience of his power, assured to them the 
victory in every conflict undertaken with his 
consent, they regarded as hopeless the enter- 
prise before them, and abandoned themselves 
to despair. With extraordinary infatuation 
and cowardice, they believed themselves 
certain to fall by the sword of the Canaanites, 
and that their women and children would be 
enslaved. They even went so far as to 
suspect that this was really the Divine inten- 
tion concerning them, and that it was only 
because the Lord hated them that he had 
brought them out of the land of Egypt. 
Caleb and Joshua, who had acted as spies 
for the two leading tribes of Judah and 
Ephraim, vainly endeavoured to counteract 
the effect which the report of the other ten 
had produced. Vainly did they assure the 
people that the obstacles were by no means 
so formidable as they had been led to appre- 
hend; and as vainly did Moses direct their 
attention to the almighty power of that arm 
by which they had hitherto been guided and 
delivered. They would not be encouraged. 
This immense host spent the following night 
in tears, crying at times, " Would God that 
we had died in Egypt!" or '' Would God we 
had died in this wilderness ! " 

The general discontent and alarm soon 
ripened into a most dangerous insurrection, 
and at last they formed the monstrous reso- 
lution of appointing a leader to conduct 
them back to their bondage in Egypt. They, 
indeed, went so far as actually to appoint a 
leader (perhaps one of the ten spies) for the 
purpose*. " Verily this race were well 
worthy the rods of their Egyptian^ task- 
masters, to whom they were so willing to 
return," we might say, did we not consider 
that it was by these rods that their spirits 
had been broken. Spiritless, however, as 
they were,— unfit as they were for action, 
and unwilling to be guided, the gross in- 
fatuation of their present course is most 
amazing. When they turned to fulfil their 
desperate purpose, could they expect that 
cloud would continue to guide them, the 
manna to feed them, and the " flinty rocks" 

* Neh. he. 17- 



to pour forth water for them 1 And, if they 
were unmindful of these things, what recep- 
tion could they expect to meet from the 
Egyptians — all whose first-born had been 
slain, and whose fathers, brothers, and sons 
had perished in the Red Sea on their account? 
They might well expect that, if their lives 
were spared by that unforgiving people, their 
bondage would be made far more bitter, and 
their chains far heavier than they ever had 
been. 

When their intention was announced, 
Moses and Aaron fell to the ground on their 
faces before all the people. Caleb and 
Joshua rent their clothes with grief and 
indignation, and renewed their former state- 
ments and remonstrances ; but so mad were 
the people that they were about to stone 
these faithful men, and probably Moses and 
Aaron, who lay prostrate before them, as 
well, when — in that moment of intense ex- 
citement—the glory of Jehovah appeared 
in the cloud above the tabernacle, arresting 
every purpose, and infusing a new and 
present fear into every heart. 

From that cloud their doom was pro- 
nounced. At the vehement entreaties of 
Moses their lives were not swept away at 
one immediate stroke. But still, it should 
be even as they had said. All that genera- 
tion—all the men above twenty years of age 
when they left Egypt,— should be cut off 
from their portion in that rich inheritance 
which they had so basely intended to forego ; 
they should all die in that wilderness— all 
leave their bones amidst its sands and soli- 
tudes, among which it was their doom to 
wander forty years (dated from the time of 
leaving Egypt), until none of them remained 
alive. From this extraordinary doom, which 
fixed to every man the extreme limit of his 
possible existence, and avowedly gave time 
no object but their deaths, Joshua and Caleb 
were excepted. Thus the two on whom they 
were about to inflict death, were destined to 
survive them all, and to become the chiefs 
and leaders of the new generation, on whom 
the inheritance of the promises was to 
devolve. The other ten spies, whose discou- 
ragements had formed the proximate cause 
of the insurrection, were smitten by some 



154 

sudden death, in which the people recognised 
a punishment from God. 

The people were thus made sensible of the 
folly of their past conduct. But this convic- 
tion had not, in the first instance, any 
salutary operation. For they attributed this 
doom to the cowardice they had displayed, 
rather than to its real cause — their distrust 
of the sufficiency of their Divine King to 
perform the promises he had made. There- 
fore, with some hope, perhaps, of reversing 
the sentence which had been passed upon 
them, they valorously determined to attack 
the enemy forthwith — for the border Canaan- 
ites had already taken alarm, and, without 
taking any offensive measures against so 
apparently formidable a host as that of the 
Hebrews, remained in a state of preparation 
on the hills, ready to guard the passes of the 
country. Moses earnestly dissuaded them 
from this enterprise, as contrary to the 
declared intention of God, as well as against 
his command, that they should withdraw 
from the frontier and retire into the desert. 
But they persisted; perhaps from a latent 
desire, in their present fit of desperation, to 
try whether they might not be able, even on 
their own resources, to arrest the doom which 
had gone forth against them. They were 
repulsed by the Canaanites with great 
slaughter. The ebullition of courage under 
which they had acted would have been but 
of short duration, even had it been attended 
with better success in the first instance. 
By their repulse, they were very forcibly 
instructed that they were, of themselves, 
unequal to the conquest of the country ; and 
were hence induced to yield a sullen acqui- 
escence in a measure, with which they would 
hardly have been satisfied unless this salutary 
conviction of their own weakness had been 
realized. 

Thus they turned from the borders of 
"the pleasant land" to wander for thirty- 
eight years in the Arabian wildernesses. 

The history of these years is very briefly 
told in the original narrative. In Numbers 
xxxiii. there is" a list of the principal stations 
of the Israelites, from the time they left 
Egypt till they arrived on the banks of the 
Jordan. It, therefore, includes the places | 



[book II. 

of their principal encampment during these 
years of wandering. Much pains have been 
bestowed by some writers on the investigation 
of this list, and in the endeavour to trace 
the various names which are there given. 
The result scarcely seems worth the labour. 
The names cannot be traced; and if they 
could, it appears of little consequence to 
know at what places the Hebrew host 
encamped while they were wandering to and 
fro in the deserts, between the Sinai moun- 
tains and the borders of Canaan, without 
any definite purpose, save to consume the 
time and the people, 01 to seek an exchange 
of pasture ground. 

During the long interval of the wandering, 
several new laws were promulgated. Only 
two of the incidents which occurred during 
this period are deemed of sufficient conse- 
quence to be recorded ; and of these, neither 
the time nor place is named. 

The first was the case of the sabbath- 
breaker who was found gathering sticks on 
the sabbath- day. Although this crime had 
been forbidden, no punishment had been 
annexed to it ; and therefore the man was 
kept in custody till the Divine commands 
could be taken. The order received was 
that he should be taken without the camp, 
and there stoned to death. This was done. 

The other was an affair of far greater 
importance; as it indicated a wide-spread 
dissatisfaction among the hereditary chiefs 
of the people, ending in a most formidable 
conspiracy to wrest the priesthood from 
Aaron, and the civil power from the hand of 
Moses. 

One Korah, a family-chief of the same 
branch of the Levitical tribe to which Moses 
and Aaron belonged, seems to have been the 
head of this conspiracy. The other leaders 
were Dathan, Abiram, and On, all of the 
tribe of Reuben ; who were probably induced 
to come forward on the ground of the right 
of primogeniture — the extinction of which 
by Jacob they would not seem to have 
recognised to the extent which the existing 
distribution of civil and sacerdotal authority 
indicated. No less than two hundred and 
fifty more of the principal and most influential 
chiefs of different tribes were drawn into 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



r 

I CHAP. V.] 



THE WANDERING. 



155 



S this combination ; and it seems to have been 
| popular with the people as soon as its object 
was avowed 

That object appears to us to have been 
misunderstood by all the writers to whose 
statements on the subject we have had 
occasion to refer. We find it stated as an 
attempt of the conspiring chiefs to usurp the 
sacerdotal functions, or else the civil and 
sacerdotal functions as jointly exercised 
by Moses and Aaron. But we cannot see on 
what claim of this sort, chiefs of tribes so 
opposed in interests as those of Levi and 
Reuben were likely to agree, and not only 
they, but chiefs of probably all the different 
tribes as well. If the pretension was the 
priesthood, who was the claimant ? Not 
Korah ; for then would the Reubenites, who 
had the hereditary claim, have supported his 
claim ? Not the Reubenites ; for then was 
the proud Levite likely to support this new 
claim to a dignity which was already in his 
tribe? And then, if the object had been the 
possession of paramount civil power by either 
of these parties, was this an object which 
the two most powerful tribes, Judah and 
Ephraim, were likely to support, or which 
they were not far more likely to oppose? 
We consider that it was, altogether, an 
attempt to overthrow the general govern- 
ment as established by the law ; and that 
this took the form of an attack of the priest- 
hood, chiefly because that was the more ob- 
vious and established feature of the general 
government. The authority of Moses was 
probably felt to be merely an incident, for 
the transmission of which the law made no 
provision. Although, therefore, even his 
authority was not unassaulted, it was less 
the ostensible object of the combination 
than that of his brother. Under this view 
it will not appear that any one of the confe- 
derated parties aspired to the priesthood ; 
but that there was a general conspiracy 
among the leading men of several tribes to 
restore things to their original footing when 
the priesthood and the civil authority went 
together with the birthright, throughout the 
larger and smaller sectional divisions — 
tribes, clans, and families of the people. 
Their charge against Moses and Aaron was 



that they had taken away the former liberties 
of the people; which, being interpreted, 
means, that they had organised their loosely 
compacted tribes into a nation, and sub- 
jected them to a general government. Apart 
from such an explanation as this, it seems 
impossible to understand the equal preten- 
sions of all the parties to the exercise of 
sacerdotal functions ; without the least inti- 
mation that they all concurred in supporting 
the claims of any one particular party. But 
although there are obvious considerations 
which preclude the supposition that the 
appropriation of the priesthood to himself 
was the avowed object of Korah, in which he 
was supported by the other parties ; there is 
much reason to conclude, from the manner 
in which Moses (when he saw through his 
designs) spoke to him, that this was his real 
and ulterior object. 

There are indications that the Reubenites, 
while they desired as heartily as the others 
to overturn the existing plan of government, 
were rather afraid of the ulterior objects of 
Korah and of making common cause with 
him. Perhaps they were fearful that by so 
doing they should seem to compromise what 
they wished to regard as the self-evident 
character of the claims they derived from 
the usual laws of primogeniture. 

In short, with some attention, we may 
perceive three parties agreeing to overturn 
the present ecclesiastical and civil govern- 
ment, and agreeing also in one common 
pretence, the liberties of the people; but 
having their several grounds of discontent, 
and differing, secretly at least, in their final 
objects. Korah appears to have felt that 
since the Levites were set apart as a sacred 
tribe, and the priesthood confined to one 
family in that tribe, his own rank therein* 
gave him a preferable claim to that dignity. 
The two hundred and fifty chiefs who joined 
him appear to have desired to reclaim, as a 
right of primogeniture, the sacerdotal privi- 
leges which had been transferred to the 
tribe of Levi. And the Reubenites probably 
felt aggrieved that Moses in all his arrange- 
ments acted on the will of Jacob as a reality, 

* Josephus says he was wealthy, and that he was older 
than Moses. 



156 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



excluding Reuben from the ordinary pre- 
eminence of the first-born, and placing J udah 
and the sons of Joseph before him. 

When the conspirators judged things ripe 
for an open rupture, they met in a body, 
and, presenting themselves before Moses and 
Aaron, they upbraided them with their un- 
just ambition, in engrossing all power in 
their own hands, and excluding the rest of 
the people, who were all, as much as they, 
the people of God. Moses was much asto- 
nished at this, speech; but he administered 
in reply a cutting rebuke to the ambitious 
Korah, and assured him and his confederates 
that, however they might gloss this matter 
to themselves and others, their proceedings 
were really levelled against the government 
of the King Jehovah. To Him, who was 
the author of the appointments of wmich 
they complained, he would leave it to decide 
who should be the ministers of his service, 
and who should be held worthy to approach 
his presence. He therefore desired them to 
assemble on the morrow at the tabernacle, 
with censers, to offer incense to God, who 
would doubtless take the occasion of making 
his will known. 

It is observable that the chiefs of Reuben, 
Dathan and Abiram*, were not present on 
this occasion. But whatever was the ground 
of their absence, they took care it should be 
known that it was not from any indifference 
to the cause in which they were engaged : 
for, when Moses sent for them to be present 
on the morrow with the others, they returned 
a very smart refusal, in terms which threw 
much light on the state of feeling that then 
prevailed : — " We will not come up. Is it a 
small thing that thou hast brought us up 
out of a land that floweth with milk and 
honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except 
thou make thyself altogether a prince over 
us? Moreover, thou hast not brought us 
into a land that floweth with milk and 
honey, or given us inheritance of fields and 
vineyards: wilt thou put out the eyes of 
these men? — We will not come up." This 

* The other Reubenite, On, is not named except in the 
first instance. It is generally thought that he separated 
from his party after he heard what Moses said. The 
rabbins allege that his wife persuaded him to relinquish 
his part in this dangerous enterprise. 



answer, involving an appeal to the miscon- 
ceptions and prejudices of the people, was 
manifestly framed for their ears more than 
for those of Moses. And as, by " the mer " 
whom, they allege, Moses intended to blind, 
Korah and the others are doubtless denoted, 
they appear to have disapproved of the 
proposed trial, of the result of which they 
might well entertain some doubts, and to 
have thought it the better course not to 
commit their own claims and pretensions to 
the same issue. 

■ Mild and forbearing as Moses usually was 
in all that concerned himself, his indignation 
rose very high when he received this re- 
proachful message. He called God to witness 
the injustice of the charge it contained, 
since so far had he been from using his 
power to enrich or aggrandise himself, that 
he had as yet reaped nothing but care and 
sorrow from it. 

The morrow came ; and all Israel anxiously 
awaited what that day might bring forth. 
Korah and his two hundred and fifty asso- 
ciates were true to their appointment, and 
appeared before the tabernacle with censers. 
They were attended by a vast host of their 
more active partisans, who seem, from the 
expressions employed, to have represented 
the sympathies and sentiments of the bulk 
of the community, who appear to have stood 
awaiting the event before their tents. 

Moses and Aaron were with or near the 
conspirators, where they stood prepared to 
offer incense. But at that moment, the 
Shechinah, that glorious symbol of the 
Divine presence, which usually abode in the 
inmost sanctuary, appeared at the door of 
the tabernacle ; and a voice was heard 
therefrom, commanding Moses and Aaron, — 
" Separate yourselves from among this con- 
gregation, that I may consume them in a 
moment." On hearing this they both fell 
upon their faces, and entreated that he 
would not be wroth with the misguided 
people for the evil into which they had been 
drawn by one ambitious man. A compliance 
with this prayer, it respecting all but the 
ringleaders, was involved in the direction 
which they received to go to the tents of 
Dathan and Abiram, and warn ihe people off 



CHAP. V.] 



THE WANDERING. 



157 



from the neighbourhood of their tents. 
Warned by the supernatural appearance at 
the entrance of the tabernacle, the people 
obeyed. Moses then addressed them, and 
appealed for the authority of his commission 
to the prodigy -which was about to follow. 
No sooner had he spoken, than the earth 
opened and engulphed the present rebels 
and all that belonged to them : while at the 
same instant, Korah and his party, who 
remained before the tabernacle, were struck 
dead by fire from heaven. Thus awfully 
perished the men who wished to make sub- 
servient to their own ends the discontent 
which they excited among the people. 

But even this awful example was not suf- 
ficient to allay the ferment which had been 
excited. It is true that the mutinous mob 
fled with horror and alarm from the doom 
which befel their leaders. But, with a 
degree of infatuation and insane hardihood, 
which is rarely to be found but among the 
blind instruments of popular commotions, 
they assembled tumultuously the very next 
day, and clamoured against Moses and 
Aaron, saying : — " Ye have killed the people 
of the Lord." Yesterday they had been 
spared : but the welfare, the very existence 
of the nation, required that a memorable 
example to all future time should now be 
made. God, therefore, sent a fearful plague 
among them, which spread rapidly through 
their ranks, and before which they fell down 
in sudden death. 

No sooner did the brothers perceive that 
the wrath of God was raging among the 
riotous crowd, than Aaron, at the instance of 
Moses, took a censer, and, filled with the 
most deep compassion and animated by all- 
conquering faith, he therewith rushed into 
the crowd, and planted himself between the 
living and the dead, as if to stay that storm 
of death, and say, " thus far shalt thou come, 
and no further." With this noble act God 
was well pleasedj and stayed the hand of the 
destroyer; but not until fourteen hundred 
people had fallen before him. 

It was evident that to persons of the most 
consequence and influence in the nation, the 
appointment of Aaron to the hereditary 
priesthood was so distasteful, that only the 



most sensible evidence that the appointment 
was indeed divine, could bring them to sub- 
mit to it. One would think that the recent 
events would have been sufficient to convince 
the most doubtful of this. Perhaps for the 
time it was so. But God was pleased, by a 
new prodigy, to afford an abiding testimony 
of his preference. None but the princes of 
the tribes were likely to think their claims 
to that high office equal or preferable to 
those of Aaron; or, at all events, if they, 
who were highest in dignity, were satisfied, 
or silenced, none of those below them could 
fairly make complaint. The princes of the 
twelve tribes and Aaron were therefore com- 
manded to take, each of them, an almond 
rod, and write thereon the name of his tribe. 
These rods, with Aaron's rod among them, 
were solemnly deposited before the ark of 
the covenant. The next morning they were 
brought forth from thence ; and it was found 
that while the other rods remained in their 
former state, the rod of Aaron was covered 
with leaves, and blossoms, and ripened fruit. 
All the people admired this mild and signifi- 
cant prodigy, and peace was re-established in 
Israel. The rod was directed to be laid up 
in the sanctuary, that it might remain an 
abiding testimony of the divine appointments, 
which do not, indeed, seem to have been ever 
after called in question. 

At length the fortieth year from the de- 
liverance commenced. By this time the 
doom of the former generation had been 
accomplished. They had all died gradually 
away. The new race which now stood in 
their place were scarcely less turbulent and 
rebellious than their fathers ; but they had 
grown up in the free air of the desert, the 
chain of bondage had not rusted their souls, 
and their necks had not been fretted by the 
yoke. They were therefore more hardy in 
their frames, and , in their hearts more 
courageous and enterprising than their 
fathers. They had also been brought up 
under the theocracy; and its forms and 
principles were familiar to them, however 
imperfectly they were as yet imbued with 
its spirit. 

As the appointed time drew nigh, they 



158 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[book II. 



were conducted again to Kadesh, — that place 
between the borders of Canaan and Edom 
where their fathers had received their doom, 
to die in the wilderness. 

Miriam died soon after their arrival at 
this place, and was buried there. The Jews 
have a notion that she was the legislatrix 
and ruler of the Hebrew women, as her 
brother was of the men. 

While they tarried at this place water 
failed them. There the recollections of what 
the elder portion of the population had seen, 
and of what the younger had heard of Egypt 
and of its abundant and glorious river, re- 
vived, and they assailed Moses with the old 
reproaches, because he had not suffered them 
to remain in that fruitful land, but had 
brought them into that " evil place," which 
was, they complained, " no place of seed, or 
of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates ; 
neither is there any water to drink." Moses 
and Aaron received the command of God to 
take the old wonder-working rod or staff [not 
that which had budded], and smite there- 
with a certain rock from which water should 
flow in abundance. They did this ; but in 
doing it manifested some degree of impa- 
tience and distrust of Jehovah, in conse- 
quence of which they were told that they 
should not be allowed to enter the promised 
land. To Moses, however, was granted the 
indulgence of viewing that land afar off, 
although not permitted to set his foot 
upon it. 

Palestine seems at this time to have been 
of difficult access on the southern frontier. 
Besides being, as we have elsewhere de- 
scribed, a hilly region, traversed by narrow 
passes and valleys, and therefore of com- 
paratively easy defence, the hills were 
crowned by forts and fortified towns which 
were at that time considered strong and 
formidable. It was also occupied by brave 
and vigilant warriors, by whom every foot of 
ground was likely to be disputed. In this 
southern part of the country, near Hebron, 
were the tali sons of Anak, the very sight of 
whom had struck the spies with terror 
thirty-eight years before. In advancing in 
this direction, they would also have their 
old and much dreaded enemies, the Philis- 



tines, on their left hand ; and they were not 
likely to remain quiet witnesses of the pro- 
gress of the Israelites in that quarter. From 
the concurrence of these causes, it did 
actually happen that this quarter of the 
country was not fully subdued till the time 
of David. This country also, in many re- 
spects, was less desirable and fertile than 
the more central parts. 

On all these accounts together, it was 
manifestly less desirable that the Hebrew 
host should enter at the south, and fight 
their way northward through the whole ex- 
tent of the country, than that they should 
at once, if possible, establish themselves in 
the central part of the country, which was 
not only the richest, but the least defensible, 
and from thence extend their power right 
and left, into the portions of country be- 
tween which they would thus be thrown. 

This was actually the course which was 
determined to be taken. But to this end it 
was necessary that the Israelites should take 
a circuit round the southern end of the Dead 
Sea, and march northward along its eastern 
border, in order to pass the Jordan and 
establish themselves at once in the very 
heart of the country to be conquered ; and 
in effecting this design it would be desirable 
to pass through the kingdom of the Edomites, 
and necessary to traverse those of the Moab- 
ites and Amorites, nations with whom the 
Hebrews had no quarrel, and with two of 
which, as being allied to themselves by 
blood, they were expressly forbidden to wage 
war. 

The mountains of Seir, which the Edom- 
ites at this time occupied, bound the valley 
of Araba on the east, and extend all the way 
from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf. 
They offer only one valley through which a 
large and encumbered army could pass from 
the western to the eastern plains. This is 
the valley of El Ghoeyr, which opens into 
the Araba at about forty-five miles to the 
south of the Dead Sea. As it afforded by far 
the most convenient and shortest route 
which the Israelites could take, it doubtless 
forms " the king's highway " through which 
Moses desired from the Edomites permission 
for the Israelites to pass. The negotiation, 



CHAP. V.] 



THE WANDERING. 



159 



if it may be so called, for this purpose, is 
curious from the illustration -which it offers 
of the practices which then prevailed as to 
the very important point of international 
law, involved in the conditions on which an 
army might expect permission to march, for 
warlike purposes, through the territories of 
a neutral or friendly power. 

At this time the eighth king of the 
Edomites was upon the throne. Eleven 
princes were subordinate to him; so that 
the king was, in fact, no more than the chief 
of twelve princes, — a relic of the patriarchal 
form of government to which the Edomites, 
in common with all ancient nations, were 
originally subject*. This empire seems, in 
the time of Moses, to have been in a very 
nourishing condition. Mention is inciden- 
tally made of eight considerable cities, and 
also of fields, vineyards, and highways in 
this country t. 

Moses had previously been cautioned by 
God not in any way to meddle injuriously 
with the Edomites ; for Mount Seir had 
been given to Esau, in the possession of 
which his descendants were not to be dis- 
turbed. Therefore, in marching through or 
along their country, they were charged to 
maintain a strict discipline, and to pay 
scrupulously for whatever food or water 
they required. 

Accordingly, when Moses sent from Kadesh. 
to request from the King of Edom a free 
passage through his territory, the ambassa- 
dors were charged with the following mes- 
sage, — " Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou 
knowest all the travail that hath befallen us : 
how our fathers went down into Egypt, and 
we have dwelt in Egypt a long time : and 
the Egyptians vexed us and our fathers : 
And when we cried unto Jehovah he heard 
our voice, and sent an angel, and hath 
brought us forth out of Egypt : and behold, 
we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of 
thy border. Let us pass, I pray thee, through 
thy country: we will 'not pass through the 
fields, or through the vineyards, neither will 
we drink of the water of the wells : we vnll go 
by the king's highway ; we will not turn to 

* Gen. xviL 20, xxxvi. 31—44. 

\ Gen. xxxvi. 31—39; Num. xx. 17, 21, 22. 



the right hand nor to the left, until ice have 
passed thy 'borders''' 

The king of Edom was afraid to admit 
such an immense body of armed men into 
his country, and sent a plain refusal to let 
them pass, and threatened to oppose by arms ' 
any attempt they might make to do so. 

The Israelites, whose experience in the 
desert had made them extremely sensible 
of the value of water, and of the necessity of 
husbanding a limited supply, suspected that 
the principal fear of the king was, lest they 
should exhaust or waste the water in the 
wells and reservoirs from which the inhabi- 
tants derived their supply of water during 
the season in which the rivers were dried 
up. They, therefore, sent back to assure 
him, that they desired nothing but leave "to 
go through on their feet," and that they 
would most willingly pay for whatever water 
they and their cattle might need. But the 
king was inexorable, and made a display of 
his forces to intimidate them. The frontier 
was so strong on this side that it was 
hardly possible for the Hebrews to force a 
passage, if they had been so minded. It 
was, therefore, resolved to take a circuitous 
route — that is, to return southward, and pass 
to the other side of these mountains at the 
point where they terminate, near the head 
of the Elanitic Gulf. They would then turn 
northward, and march along the borders of 
the high plains, which lie beyond these 
mountains eastward. 

They, therefore, proceeded down the broad 
valley of Araba, till they reached the foot of 
Mount Hor, where they encamped. To the 
top of that mountain, Moses, Aaron, and 
Eieazar proceeded, according to Divine direc- 
tion, in the sight of all the people, and there 
Aaron died and was buried. The tomb 
which is now seen afar on the top of that 
mountain, in all probability marks the spot 
of his death and sepulture. The Moslems, 
who highly honour the memory of Aaron, 
hold this tomb in great reverence, and offer 
sacrifices there. 

Thus died a man rendered eminent by the 
circumstances in which he was placed, and 
by the important part he took in the de- 
liverance of Israel, and in the establishment 



160 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



of the Hebrew commonwealth. If his un- 
equal temperament, and the facility of his 
disposition, disqualified him for the higher 
place which his younger brother so ably 
filled, and amply justifies and explains the 
divine preference, we must still acknowledge 
that the services which he rendered were 
neither few nor unimportant, and were, of 
their kind, indispensably necessary. 

From the place which the circumstance 
occupies in the narrative, it would seem that 
it was while they were encamped at this 
place, although other considerations would 
rather indicate that it was at Kadesh, that 
the outposts of the Hebrew camp were 
attacked by one of the Canaanitish nations, 
on the southern border of Palestine. Their 
leader is called the king of Arad ; and most 
of the Jewish writers think they were a tribe 
of Amalekites, which, under all the circum- 
stances, is not very unlikely. This attack 
was so far successful that the Canaanites 
were able to carry off several Israelites as 
captives. On this, the Hebrews put the 
whole invading tribe, with their cities, under 
that solemn vow of devotement to utter 
destruction, under its proper name of 
cherem. This vow they were enabled to ac- 
complish when they ultimately came again 
in contact with the same people, in the great 
warfare which they waged against the 
Canaanites. Then they utterly destroyed 
this people and their cities, and called the 
name of the land Hormah, — the devoted 
place *. 

The people having considered their wan- 
dering in the desert nearly at an end, and 
having made up their minds for a shorter 
and more pleasant route, were greatly dis- 
appointed at this retrograde movement — 
this delay in their anticipated change of life 
and diet, and renewal of the fatigues and 
privations which they had deemed to be all 
but ended. As they pursued their difficult 
way down the waterless and sandy Araba 
their discontent gathered strength, and at 
last began to vent itself in the usual manner : 
" Wherefore have ye brought us up out of 
Egypt to die in the wilderness 1 For there 
is no bread, neither is there any water, and 

* Comp. Num. xxi. 1—3 ; Josh. xii. 14 ; Judg. i. 16, 17. 



our soul loatheth this light bread." For this 
offence the Lord refused to protect them 
from the mortal bites of the serpents which 
infested the region to which they now came, 
and which are described by Burckhardt as 
still abounding in a neighbouring district t. 
They are called " fiery serpents," either from 
the inflammation caused by their bites or 
from their fiery and splendid appearance. 
Under punishment this generation behaved 
better than their fathers. In the present 
case they went to Moses, confessed that they 
had sinned, and implored him to intercede 
for them. On this, Moses, at the command 
of God, made the figure of a serpent in brass, 
and elevated it upon a pole in the midst of 
the camp ; and it was the Divine appoint- 
ment that whoever looked upon this ensign, 
which Christ declares to have been designed 
as an emblem of Himself crucified in- 
stantly recovered of his mortal wound. But 
many of the people had died before this 
mysterious remedy was given. The brazen 
serpent was preserved as a memorial of this 
miracle till the time of Hezekiah, who 
ordered it to be destroyed on account of the 
superstitious regard which the Israelites 
then paid to it §. 

Corrected by this experience, the people 
went on patiently the remainder of their 
way. When, having rounded the mountains, 
on the south, they turned northward, march- 
ing along the eastern and more exposed 
frontier of Edom, the descendants of Esau 
were afraid to molest or irritate them ; but, 
on the contrary, brought them provisions 
and water for sale||. In like manner, the 
few inhabitants now found in that quarter 
derive much profit from the sale of the 
produce of their fields and orchards to the 
great caravan which yearly marches the 
same road on its way between Damascus 
and Mecca T. 

The desert wanderings of the Israelites 
may be considered to have ended when they 
arrived at the brook Zared, a stream which 
flows towards the southern extremity of the 
Dead Sea, and which at this time seems to 

t ' Travels in Syria,* pp. 499 , 500. 

( John iii. 14, 15. § 2 Kings xviii. 4. 

Deut. ii. 29. II Burckhardt, p. 405. 



CHAP. V.] 



THE WA1TDERIX0. 



161 



have formed the boundary between the ter- 
ritories of Edom and Moab. Along the 
borders and in the valley of this stream they 
encamped. Here, before entering the land 
of Moab, the Israelites were warned that 
this land formed no part of their promised 
inheritance. It had been given to the de- 
scendants of Lot, whom they were charged 
not to molest. The Moabites, on their part, 
offered no opposition to the march of the 
Hebrews through their territory ; though it 
may be suspected that it was less good will 
than fear that prevented their refusal. So 
the Israelites pursued their march to the 
banks of the river Arnon, where they en- 
camped. 

In former times the territories of Moab 
had extended considerably to the north of 
that river. But before this, a division of the 
Amorites, being probably driven thereto by 
the increase of their numbers in Canaan, had 
crossed the Jordan in search of a new settle- 
ment. They expelled the descendants of 
Lot from all that part of their territory 
which lay to the north of the Arnon, and 
occupied it in their room. The Amorites 
were among the Canaanites, against whom 
the Israelites were to Avage an exterminating 
war. But this applied to them only as in- 
habitants of Canaan ; for they made no claim 
of the country east of the Jordan, and had 
no commission to wage war with any of its 
inhabitants. 

The Israelites therefore sent ambassadors 
to Sihon, -the king of the Amorites, whose 
metropolis was Heshbon, requesting per- 
mission to pass through his country in the 

I same terms which they had previously em- 
ployed in making a similar application to 

i the king of Edom. Remembering that the 
Amorites were Canaanites, and closely con- 
nected with the tribes on the other side 
the river, and considering the very serious 
objections they might entertain to the set- 
tlement of the Israelites in their neighbour- 
hood, it is not surprising that Sihon not only 
refused to permit them to pass through his 
country, but actually advanced with his 
forces to prevent them from crossing the 
Arnon. Having obtained the permission of 
their Divine King to meet the Amorites in j 



battle, with the assured promise of victory, 
the new race of Hebrews advanced cou- 
rageously to their first essay of arms. The 
two armies met near Jahaz. The alacrity 
which the Israelites exhibited in meeting 
them half way considerably damped the 
valour of the Amorites. Their ranks were 
broken at the first onset, and they fled to 
seek the shelter of their towns. But the 
greater part were slain in the pursuit, in 
which the Hebrews had great advantage ; 
for not only were they, from their life in the 
desert, active and hardy in their frames, but 
lightly armed and skilled in the use of 
missile weapons, the sling, the dart, and the 
bow. The king himself was slain ; and the 
Israelites took possession, by right of con- 
quest, of his dominion, which comprised that 
fine territory which extends between the 
rivers Arnon and Jabbok. This country, 
having the Jordan on the west, was thus 
bounded by three fine streams, and not only 
possessed a fertile soil and rich pastures, but 
was already well settled, containing towns 
and villages and cultivated lands * 

This acquisition, however, brought the 
Israelites close to the southern frontier of 
the kingdom of Bashan, which reached to 
the river Jabbok. Og, the king of this 
country, was of the race of the old Rephaim, 
who inhabited the same country in the time 
of Abraham. To give some idea of his bulk 
and stature, the historian informs that his 
bedstead was of iron, and measured four 
yards and a half long, by-'two yards widet. 
This monarch is described by Josephus as a 
friend and ally of Sihon, and had been 
marching to his assistance ; when, finding 
that he was already defeated and slain, he 
determined to avenge him and to expel the 
intruders. But, in attempting to execute 
this intention, he was himself slain in battle 
with the Hebrews, and all his army de- 
stroyed. Moses then crossed the Jabbok and 
overran the country, taking possession of 
the sixty walled towns which it contained. 

* See Josephus, iv. 5. I, 2. 

t '* Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits 
the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." (Deut. iii. 11.) 
But as a bedstead is larger than the man for whose use it is 
intended, Og's stature was doubtless less— perhaps about 
nine feet. 



162 



THE BIBLE HISTORY, 



[book II. 



Thus the Israelites were led into the occupa- : 
tion of a rich and beautiful country which 
they had not designed or expected to obtain, 
extending from the river Arnon to the roots 
of Anti-Lebanon. 

With the Ammonites the Israelites did not 
interfere, although they lay close, on the 
east, to their new dominions. For this there 
were two reasons— that they had been for- 
bidden to disturb the children of Lot, and 
that the frontier of the Ammonites was very 
strong. 

The Moabites were doubtless well pleased 
to witness the overthrow of their old ene- 
mies and conquerors, the Amorites. But this 
was all of satisfaction they could find in the 
late events. They considered that they had 
a fair claim to the lands occupied by the 
Amorites, stronger than that which the He- 
brews derived from their recent conquest; 
and it was by no means a satisfaction to 
them to see thus suddenly established in 
their neighbourhood a power which com- 
bined the authority and resources which had 
previously been divided between two states, 
either of which had been singly a sufficient, 
or more than sufficient, match for themselves. 
They could not but apprehend danger from 
such neighbourhood, not probably being 
aware that the Israelites had been forbidden 
to disturb the children of Lot in the terri- 
tory which they actually occupied. But the 
Moabites had sufficiently profited by the 
overthrow of Sihon and Og to be aware that 
they could not, in their own resources, risk 
any hostile movement against the Hebrews. 
Balak, the king of Moab, therefore sought to 
strengthen himself by the assistance of such 
of the widely-dispersed tribes of Midian 
(descended from the son of Abraham by 
Keturah) as were then pasturing their flocks 
in the eastern plains. The emirs of Midian 
readily yielded their assistance (doubtless 
allured by the prospect of rich spoil). And 
they, who had been accustomed to wander 
far, with their flocks, and herds, and in com- 
mercial caravans, which bare to Syria and 
to Egypt the rich productions of the remoter 
EasC told Balak of a famous prophet or 
diviner, Balaam by name, who dwelt beyond 
the Euphrates. This man saw far into the 



future, and his words were of such power, 
that whatsoever he cursed was certainly ac- 
cursed, and whatsoever he blessed was 
blessed indeed. They therefore concluded 
that before they committed themselves by 
any hostile acts, it would be best to send for 
this wondrous man, that he might lay the 
heavy burden of his curse upon the host of 
Israel. The expediency of this course was 
probably suggested by the appearance of a 
religious character in the march and en- 
campment of the Israelites, with their 
splendid tabernacle and ritual service, and 
with the evident proofs which were offered, 
that they were under the special care and 
direction of some supernatural power. Hence 
they judged it useless to act against this 
favoured people, until the supernatural 
blessing under which they prospered were 
neutralised by the supernatural power of a 
curse from the Mesopotamian prophet. 

Persons of consideration were sent from 
both parties, with suitable presents, to fetch 
Balaam from Mesopotamia. They were well 
received by the prophet, whom we take to 
have been not an idolatrous diviner, but an 
ill-disp sed prophet of the true God— such 
as we know there were in later times. He 
promised to give the messengers an answer 
in the morning, and when the morning came 
he told them he could not go, for the people 
whom he was desired to curse were blessed 
of God. 

The king of Moab and the emirs of Midian 




[Egyptian Asses, saddled (Ancient).] 



CHAP. V.] THE WA 

were but little satisfied with, this answer. 
They sent again by personages of higher 
rank: than before and more in number to 
renew the request in more urgent terms, 
and with the promise of great wealth and 
high honours for his reward. Balaam, who 
greatly desired to go, that he might reap all 
the benefits offered to him, was reluctant to 
act at once on his former instructions, and 
repeat his refusal ; but hoping to receive 
permission, desired the messengers to await 
an answer till the morning. In the night 
he was told he might go if the messengers 
positively insisted on his going with them ; 
but, in that case, he was, on his arrival, to 
act as he should be then instructed. The 
overjoyed prophet got up early in the morn- 
ing, and saddled his ass, on which animal 
men of holy callings in the East still affect 
to ride*. He then called the messengers, 
and told them that he was at liberty to go 
with them, but could still only act according 
to the instructions he might receive. 

This over-readiness of the prophet, from 
the desire of gain, to avail himself of the 
conditional leave he had obtained, while he 
knew that he could only satisfy the king by 
cursing those whom the Lord had blessed, 
was deeply displeasing to God. As he rode 
along, his ass suddenly refused to proceed ; 
and when, with redoubled blows, he en- 
deavoured to urge him on, a human voice 
was given to the animal to complain of the 
treatment it received. In the anger of the 
moment the prophet was heedless of the 
miracle, and returned a passionate answer; 
when suddenly his eyes were opened to be- 
hold " things invisible to mortal sight," and 
he saw the cause of his beast's refractoriness, 
— an angel of God stood in the way, with a 
drawn sword to intercept his path. He was 
now apprised of the Divine displeasure at 
his conduct, and was told that he had been 
struck dead unless his ass, seeing the angel, 
had refused to proceed. On this Balaam 
humbled himself, and expressed his readiness 
to return home if so commanded. But he 

* The saddles of asses, so often mentioned in Scripture, 
were, doubtless, such as our cut exhibits. They are 
mr rely mats or quilted ckths, similar to those still in use, 
a'though now a kind of pad is often u^ed. 



NDERINQ. lb"o I 
| 

was told he might go on; but was enjoined 
to act in future precisely as he should be 
directed. Indeed, it is manifest that this 
adventure on the road was intended to 
teach him the necessity of strict and literal 
obedience to his orders, however distasteful 
they might be to him. This suggests an 
adequate cause for what has seemed to some 
a preposterous and needless incident. 

At the end of his journey his arrival was 
hailed with great joy by the princes of Moab 
and Midian ; but this was somewhat checked 
by his telling them that he could act but 
as the involuntary organ of a higher power, 
whose behests he could not gainsay. 

The prophet was however taken by the 
king to the summit of a mountain, from 
which he could command a view of the 
Hebrew encampment, laid out before him in 
all its order and beauty, with the splendid 
tabernacle of Jehovah standing apart in the 
central square, in the place usually occupied 
by the tent of the emir or the king. He was 
much impressed by the sight ; and when the 
spirit of prophecy came upon him, he cried, — 

" How can I curse whom God hath not cursed % 
How can I execrate whom Jehovah hath not 
execrated ] " 

and then proceeded to " bless them alto- 
gether." The king was deeply mortified at 
this result; and he successively took Balaam 
to different points, from which views might 
be commanded of different portions of the 
Israelite camp, in the hope that although 
the prophet might not be allowed to curse 
the whole, there was some portion on which 
the weight of his ban might be laid. But on 
all these occasions, Balaam was compelled to 
break forth into blessings, and into prophecies 
of the future glories and victories of Israel. 
He alluded, not obscurely, to the triumphs j 
of David, in the king who was to extend the 
power of Israel over the neighbouring state, 
the respective dooms of which, in being ulti- 
mately brought under the Hebrew sceptre, 
he clearly foretold. Even Moab was not ex- 
cepted. All these prophecies and blessings 
were delivered with as much force and power 
of poetic expression as can be found in any 
of the later prophets ; and this it may be 

m 9 



164 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



important to note, as showing that the spirit I 
of inspiration wrought as powerfully in the 
most unwilling as in the most willing instru- 
ments. There is much interest to us in the 
expressions of admiration which the view of 
the Hebrew encampment extorts from a per- 
son so experienced in camps as Balaam ; and 
beholding it from the vantage ground on 
which his impressions place us, we have a 
more distinct notion of its beautiful order 
than we could otherwise realize. At the 
first view, he cried, — 

" When, from the tops of the rocks, I see them, 
And from the lofty hills I behold them 
Lo ! they are a people that shall dwell alone, 
And shall not be reckoned among the nations. 
Who shall count the dust-like seed of Jacob? 
Who shall number the multitude of Israel?" 

Again, the second time, — 
" Behold ! I have received a command to bless, — 

For God hath blessed, and I cannot revoke it. 

I behold no trouble in Jacob, 

Nor do I see distress in Israel. 

Jehovah their God is with them, 

And to him they shout as their king." 
And another time, we are expressly told that 
it was when he saw "Israel encamped ac- 
cording to their tribes" that he exclaimed, — 
" How beautiful are thy tents, Jacob ! 

And thy tabernacles, Israel ! 

As vales planted with groves * ; 

Like gardens by the side of a river ; 

Like lign-aloes planted by J ehovah ; 

As cedars by water streams." 

In the end, Balak would have been very 
willing that Balaam should " Neither curse 
them at all, nor bless them at all," and was 
unutterably humbled that his design had 
been so strangely and entirely reversed. 
Balaam himself was, no doubt, quite as 
much disappointed, as he was obliged to 
depart without the rewards and honours by 
which he had been tempted. As we after- 
wards find him among the Midianites, it 
would seem that instead of returning home 
he went no farther than from the Moabites 
to them ; or else that he went home and 

* This and most of the other images, obviously allude 
to the parallel lines of tents, forming streets, or roads, 
like vales. 



afterwards returned. But, either before his 
set out or after his return, he gave the per- 
nicious and fatal advice, that the only way 
to weaken the Israelites and bring them into 
trouble would be by drawing them aside to 
the worship of the native gods ; for then 
their own God would be provoked, and would 
withdraw His protection from them, in which 
case they might easily be vanquished. And 
he suggested that the beauty of the native 
women might well be made the instrument 
of this seduction. 

The chiefs of Moab and Midian spared no- 
thing to carry this most pernicious council 
into effect. A seemingly amicable intercourse 
was opened with the Israelites, by means of 
which the most beautiful females of the two 
nations were purposely brought under the 
notice of the ardent and undisciplined youth 
of the Hebrew cause. They fell into the 
snare thus cunningly laid for them. Great 
numbers of them yielded up their souls to 
their fair enslavers ; and, rather than be se- 
parated from them, refused the observance 
of those peculiar laws which rendered a free 
and equal intercourse with strangers and 
idolaters impossible. These barriers being 
overleaped, there was but a step to a par- 
ticipation in the idolatrous services of the 
gods worshipped in those parts. Indeed, 
as the chief of those gods was the obscene * 
Baalpeor, it is far more than likely that the 
intercourse between the Hebrews and these 
"fair idolatresses" was in itself made to seem 
an act of idolatrous service. Certain it is, 
that the people allowed themselves to be 
drawn to worship the gods of Moab, and eat 
of their sacrifices ; and many of them were 
not ashamed to wear openly the obscene 
badges of Baalpeor. 

Any long continuance of this state of 
affairs would have involved nothing less 
than the complete overthrow of the whole 
system of religion, government, and morals, 
which had been established with so much 
pains and difficulty; and now, at the mo- 
ment for action, w T ould have compelled the 
abandonment of all the high objects which 
had so long been kept before the view of the 
nation. The severest measures of correction 
were hence necessary. God therefore sent 



CHAP. V.] 



THE WAXDERLXG. 



165 



a most destructive plague among them ; and 
besides this, Moses was commanded to order 
the judges to slay all the men, in the several 
divisions over which they presided, who were 
seen wearing the badges of Baalpeor. This 
was done; but the plague went raging on, 
and the camp was full of lamentation, when 
the prince of a chief house in the tribe of 
Simeon, Zimri by name, was seen openly con- 
ducting Cozbi, the daughter of one of the 
Midiantish emirs, to his tent. This cool pro- 
ceeding, at such a time of calamity, roused 
the indignation of Phineas, the grandson of 
Aaron, and son of the present high priest, 
Eleazar ; and, acting on the burning impulse 
of the moment, he took a spear and followed 
the parties to the tent, and there slew them 
both at one thrust. This act, under peculiar 
circumstances, which would prevent it from 
being adduced as a precedent, was accepted 
by God as one of atonement, for instantly the 
plague ceased. The number who perished on 
this occasion was 24,000*. 

As the Midianites had been more active 
than the Moabites in this affair — perhaps 
because their semi-nomade habits enabled 
themselves and their females to associate 
more freely with the Israelites than was 
possible to a more settled people like the 
Moabites — Moses was commanded to de- 
nounce war against them. As this war was 
only against the adjoining tribes who had 
been immediately engaged in this disgrace- 
ful and insidious policy, a draft of 12,000 
picked men, 1000 from each tribe, was judged 
sufficient. Against these Midianites the war 
was declared to be one of extermination, on 
the same principle as that which in modern 
times adjudges death to the foreigners who 
excite a people to rebellion against their 
rightful king. Here, as in many other cases, 
transactions in the early Hebrew history are 
liable to be misunderstood whenever we allow 
ourselves to forget that Jehovah was really 
and practically the King of the Hebrew 
people. 

This small army, without the loss of a 

* St. Paul says (1 Cor. x. 8, that " twenty-three thousand 
persons died by the plague;" and, as the original number 
is 24,000, it has been reasonably conjectured that this is the 
full number, but that 1000 were slain by the judges, and I 
the rest by the plague. 



single man, took ample vengeance on the 
Midianites. The Israelites descended like a 
storm upon the country, carrying fire and 
sword wherever they went. The towns and 
strongholds were destroyed, and every man 
who fell into their hands was put to the 
sword. Among these were five emirs, — the 
chiefs, probably, of as many tribes or clans ; 
and with them Balaam the prophet reaped 
the wages of his iniquity. They saved all 
the women and children, and finally returned 
to the camp with an immense booty, con- 
sisting of 675,000 sheep, 70,000 beeves, and 
60,000 asses, besides upwards of 8000 ounces 
of gold, in various ornaments of that metal, 
such as chains, bracelets, rings, ear-rings, and 




f Ear-rings of Men. J 



some uncertain ornament which appears to 
have been worn upon the breast. From this 
account of the spoil, the Midianites appear 
to have been a wealthy semi-pastoral people, 
and (as the ornaments seem to be those of the 
men) studious of splendour in their attire, 
Ear-rings do not appear to have been worn 
by men among many of the more civilized 
nations of antiquity, not, for instance, by 
the Egyptians ; but among the sculptured 
antiquities of that people several foreign 
nations are represented with this ornament, 
as shown in the engraving above. 

When the victors returned with their cap- 
tives and spoil, Moses was very wroth that 
the women had been spared, seeing that they 
had been the exciting cause of the recent ca- 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



iamities and sins. He therefore commanded 
that all of them should be slain excepting 
the young virgins, who were to be kept as 
domestic slaves. All the male children he 
also ordered to be put to death. Infidelity 
has made a stand upon this conduct of Moses, 
as equally unjust and cruel. It may be an- 
swered that, when not acting under the Divine i 
orders— and there is no mention of any com- 
mand of God on this occasion— Moses was 
but a man, and liable as such to errors in 
policy and feeling, from passion or prejudice. 
The destruction of the very guilty women 
might be vindicated by such considerations 
of justice with respect to the past and of 
policy with reference to the future, as, we 
suspect, would have caused little hesitation 
in any of the chiefs of ancient nations, who 
rarely allowed any considerations to interfere 
with their views of policy ; but the slaughter 
of the unoffending male children is very dif- 
ficult to justify, and no satisfactory reason 
appears why they might not have been put 
on the same footing with the female children. 
As the Hebrew word rendered "children" 
comprehends grown youths as well as infants, 
—in short, all under twenty years of age- 
it is no doubt true that the mass of these 
were old enough to have received the taint 
of paternal corruption, and to have remem- 
bered with vengeful hearts the fate of their 
fathers, mothers, and sisters ; and these con- 
siderations, doubtless, had their weight with 
Moses as well as the force of the terrible 
example which this massacre would offer. 
Even to this case, therefore, the following 
sensible observations of Jahn will, in some 
degree, apply, while they bear generally on 
those seeming severities of the Hebrew sys- 
tem of war, which we shall have frequent 
occasion to notice and explain : — 

" Anciently war was characterised by deeds 
of ferocity and cruelty. The Hebrews have, 
therefore, a claim to our forgiveness, if, in 
some instances, they resorted to those cruel 
measures, which were universally prevalent 
in their day, in order to strike terror upon 
other nations, to deter them from committing 
injuries upon themselves, and to secure their 
own tranquillity. There are some things, 
however, in their history which canuot be 



approved*. Still, as was said above, their 
severity in all instances cannot be con- 
demned ; for it is permitted by the natural 
law of nations, to a people, to inflict as many 
and as great evils upon an enemy as shall be 
sufficient to deter others from committing 
the like offence. The prevalent state of 
feeling among nations, whether it tend to 
kindness or cruelty, will" determine how 
much is necessary to secure such an object. 
Nations anciently could not exhibit that 
humanity and forbearance in war which are 
common among modern European nations, 
without leaving themselves exposed to every 
sort of injury t. The general character of 
Hebrew warfare was comparatively mild and 
humane." t That this statement is true we 
shall ourselves be able, as occasion offers, to 
&how, by adducing illustrations from the war 
usages of the ancient Egyptians, of whose 
"civilization" so high an opinion is now 
entertained; as well as from the existing 
usages of eastern nations. Several of the 
general usages of Hebrew warfare were 
brought into operation on this occasion, and 
may well be noticed in this place. 

It will be observed that all the males were 
trained to the use of arms — or rather, were 
understood to be able to use arms; for, as 
now in eastern countries, every one probably 
acquainted himself with the use of arms for 
the purpose of self-defence. This is natural 
iu a crude state of society, in which every 
one has cause to consider it probable that he 
shall be in circumstances to act hostilely or 
defensively against others. All the men 
capable of bearing arms were enrolled in the 
public registers, by the genealogists (shoterim), 
under the direction of the princes of the 
several tribes. In case of war, those who 
were to be called into actual service were 
taken from such as were thus enrolled, the 
whole body not being expected to take the 
field except on extraordinary occasions. In 
immediate prospect of war, the levy was 
made by the genealogists §. 

* Judg. viii. 4—21. xx. i. et seq. ; 2 Kings xv. 16 ; 2 Chron. 
xxv. 12. 

f Num. xxxi. 14. et seq. ; 2 Sam. ii. 31 ; comp. 2 Sam. 
x 1—5. xi. 1; Amos i. 13; 2 Sam. viii. 8. 7; comp. 2 Kings 
iii. 27 ; Amos ii. 1. 

$ 2 Sam. viii. 2; 1 Kings xx. 30—43; 2 Kings v.. 21—23 ; 
2 Chron. xxviii. 8. § Dent. xx. 5 — J). 



CHAP. V.] 

'As might be expected in a theocracy, 
priests were appointed to go with the army, 
in some sort, as ministers of the Divine King. 
Their presence was considered a sanction to 
the undertakings, which, in consequence, 
\hey had doubtless considerable share in 
controlling. It was, however, their principal 
duty to direct the attention of the army to 
the Invisible King as their actual Leader, 
who in a just cause would surely give them 
the victory, and to whom the glory of that 
victory should be ascribed. It was therefore 
they who gave the signal of attack by 
blowing the silver trumpets, and they who 
addressed the men before the action. The 
words they employed were: — "Hear, 
Israel ! Ye approach this day unto battle 
against your enemies. Let not your hearts 
faint : fear not, and do not tremble, neither 
be ye terrified because of them. For Je- 
hovah your God is He that goeth with you, 
to fight for you against your enemies, to 
save you." * In later times, however, generals 
and kings relieved the priests from the duty 
of addressing the troops. On the present 
occasion, Phineas, the son of the high-priest, 
was he who went with the army ; and the 
Jewish writers inform us that the priest, or 
rather, we suppose, the chief of the priests 
who went with the army, was considered as 
representing the high-priest and was in fact 
the high-priest for the purposes of the war; 
and that for this purpose he previously 
underwent the ceremony of anointing, from 
which he is called " the Anointed for the 
War." All this is very likely, except the 
anointing, of which we have considerable 
doubt. 

The manner in which the spoil taken from 
the Midianites was divided, was probably 
not new, or peculiar to the Hebrews; but 
offers a valuable illustration of ancient 
usages on this subject. As the troops were 
regarded as citizens, engaged in a cause in 
which they had a personal interest, they 
received no wages or even subsistence while 
engaged in service. Hence it was considered 
but just that they should look to the spoils 
of the enemy as the rew r ard of their toils and 
dangers. To encourage individual prowess, 

* Deut. xx. 2-4. 



167 

a warrior was entitled to appropriate to him- 
self whatever spoils he might personally win : 
hence, in the present case, the articles of 
gold, (fee, were considered the property of 
the soldiers ; and as such they made a free 
offering of it as an oblation to their Divine 
Kingt. But the living prey, whether of 
cattle or men, were subject to an equal 
division, — that is, the flocks and captives 
were placed together and numbered. They 
were then divided into two parts, one of 
which was given to the great body of the 
men fit for war who had remained at home, 
subject to a deduction of one-fiftieth part for 
the Levites ; the other half belonged to the 
smaller body who had been actually engaged, 
subject only to the deduction of a five-hun- 
dredth part for the priests. It appears that, 
in order to render the division more equal, 
the flocks, cattle, and captives were all 
publicly sold, and the money which they 
produced was divided in these proportions. 

It also appears, from the example offered 
on this occasion, that when the army re- 
turned home, and before it was disbanded, 
the officers took an account of the men under 
their charge, and reported to the chief 
magistrate the number that were missing. 

Some of the Hebrew tribes had more 
abundant possessions of flocks and herds 
than others. Among these were those of 
Reuben and Gad. These tribes observed 
that the land conquered from Sihon and Og 
abounded in rich pastures (which is true 
even to this day), and doubting that they 
could be better provided for anywhere else; 
they saw also that this country offered them 
the advantage of sending out their flocks 
into the open deserts on the east and south- 
east, which might not be easily realized in a 
country shut up between the river and the 
sea. They therefore applied to Moses, de- 
siring to have this land assigned them for 
their inheritance ; in consideration of which 
they were willing to relinquish their claim 
to a possession in the land of Canaan. Moses 
at first thought that they were disposed to 
seek their rest too soon in a land which 
all the tribes had helped to conquer. But 
when he understood that they were quite 

t Num. xxxi. 50. 



THE WAXDEKING. 



168 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II. 



willing that all the men but such as it might 
be necessary to leave for the protection of 
their families and property, should go over 
Jordan with the other tribes, to assist them 
in their wars, he very much approved of their 
proposal, and agreed to their request. But 
as this territory seemed disproportionately 
large for two tribes only, he included half 
the tribe of Manasseh in the grant. Reuben 
had the southern part, which the Amorites 
had taken from Moab, and re-established 
Heshbon, which had been the capital of 
Sihon ; Gad got the central part, which the 
Amorites had formerly conquered from the 
Ammonites, including more than a half of 
the land of Gilead; and the half-tribe of 
Manasseh received the northernmost portion, 
comprehending the rest of Gilead with the 
territories of Og, king of Bashan, of which 
the chief towns were Ashtaroth and Edrei. 

And now, towards the end of the forty 
years, during which the Israelites had been, 
for their sins, kept back from their promised 
heritage, it was deemed advisable that a new 
registration of the people might be taken, and 
a comparison made with the census which had 
been taken, in the first year, in Sinai. It might 
thus be made evident, on the face of the record, 
that the Divine judgment had been accoin- 
. plished in the appointed time, in consequence 
of which the existing race were in a condition 
to enter the Promised Land. It was also of 
some importance on other grounds that this 



enumeration should be made before the people 
entered upon those cruel wars in which they 
were about to engage. The results of this 
inquiry and comparison showed that of that 
evil generation which was above twenty 
years of age on leaving Egypt, only two 
persons, besides Moses, remained alive ; and 
these two, Caleb and Joshua, were the very- 
persons, who, on account of their deservings, 
had been by name excepted from the general 
doom. Nothing could be better calculated 
than this, on the one hand, to encourage the 
existing race, by assuring them that they 
were the special objects of the Divine notice 
and providence ; and, on the other, to humble 
them, by bringing home to every family and 
to every individual the conviction of the 
certainty of those judgments which were 
declared against misdoers. 

It appeared also that the population, not- 
withstanding the great and rapid change of 
its materials, was but little altered in its 
amount. The resulting difference was but 
1820 — being the amount of the decrease as 
compared with the former census ; but of the 
tribe of Levi, which had received an increase 
of 727, the difference is reduced to little 
more than 1000. But although the whole 
numbers were so singularly near each other, 
there was a great and remarkable difference 
in the details. This will be best shown by 
the following comparative table, which we 
I transcribe from 'The Pictorial Bible': — 





First Year. 


Last Year. 


Increase. 


Decrease. 


Reuben . 


. 46,500 . 


. 43.730 . 




2,770 


Simeon . 


. 59,300 . 


. 22,200 . 




37,100 


Gad 


. 45,650 . 


. 40,500 . 




5,150 


Judah 


. 74,600 . 


. 76,500 


1,900 . 




Issachar . 


. 54,400 . 


. 64,300 . 


9,900 . 




Zebulun . 


. 57,400 . 


. 60,500 . 


3,100 . 




Ephraim . 


. 40,500 . 


. 32,500 




8,000 


Manasseh 


. 32,200 . 


. 52,700 . 


. 20,500 . 




Benjamin 


. 35,400 . 


. 45,600 . 


. 10,200 . 




Dan 


. 62,700 . 


. 64,400 . 


. 1,700 . 




Asher 


. 41,500 . 


. 53,400 


. 11,900 . 




Naphtali . 


. 53,400 . 


. 45,400 




8,000 




603,550 


601,730 


59,200 


61,020 








Decrease on the whole 


1,820 


Levites, from a ) 


22,273 . 


. 23,000 


727 . 




month old } 











' CHAP. V.] 



THE WA 



.NDERING-. 



169 



j The result of this forty years' wandering 
in the desert, and of that expurgation, which 
in its effect left but two men who were above 
sixty years of age, must have presented a 
body of men, who, physically and morally 
speaking, were singularly calculated for the 
great and arduous enterprises which lay 
before them. 

The forty years were now well-nigh closed, 
and all things were ready for the advance 
into the Promised Land. Moses therefor© 
knew the day of his death could not be 
distant, for he had been warned that it was 
not his privilege to lead the people who had 
so long engaged his care into their inherit- 
ance ; but only to behold it afar off. Indeed, 
his years had already been protracted to the 
utmost span to which man's life then 
reached; but although not less than 120 
years old, his eye was not yet dim nor his 
natural strength abated. The last acts of 
this able and good man we shall describe in 
the words of Professor Jahn, whose state- 
ments it is always a pleasure to be able to 
introduce : — 

" Moses, having directed the Hebrews thus 
far during his life, wished to do all in his 
power to preserve the knowledge and worship 
of Jehovah among them after his death. 
The people, and even the magistrates, during 
the forty years of his administration, were 
far from being thoroughly imbued with the 
spirit of the theocracy which he had es- 
tablished. They had so often rebelled, and 
offered sacrifice to idols, that it became ne- 
cessary to have all animals slain at the altar, 
and under the inspection of the priests. In 
their journeyings through the wilderness, 
they had carried with them portable shrines 
of Egyptian idols*; and it was but a short 
time since they had been guilty of the 
grossest idolatry f. It was evidently neces- 
sary that religion should be made to them, 
as much as possible, an object of sense ; that 
it should be so closely interwoven with the 
civil institution that it could be neither 
forgotten nor perverted; and it was par- 
ticularly desirable that the new generation 

| should be made to perceive the nature of 

* In the original " portable tabernacles of Saturn." 
\ Amos v. 26; Acts vii. 23; Num. xxv. 1— 0. 



their polity, and the relation in which they 
stood to the true God. 

" Moses accordingly wrote for the people 
an earnest exhortation to obedience, in which 
he alluded to the instances of the kindness,, 
severity, and providence of God, which the 
Hebrews had already experienced; he ex- 
hibited in a strong light the sanctions of the 
law ; he repeated the most important statutes, 
and added a few new ones to the code. These 
exhortations (which compose his fifth book, 
or Deuteronomy) he delivered to the magis- 
trates as his farewell address, at a time when 
their minds were well prepared to receive 
wholesome instruction by the accomplish- 
ment of the Divine promises which had 
already commenced. The genealogists, each 
in his own circle, communicated all to the 
people, includiDg the women and the chil- 
dren J. 

" That the latest generations might have a 
visible and permanent memorial of their 
duty, he directed that, after they had taken 
possession of Canaan, the law (or at least its 
fundamental principles, and the first de- 
velopment of its sanctions, as exhibited in 
Exod. xx. — xxiv.) should be engraved on 
pillars of stone, plastered with lime, and 
that these pillars should be erected with 
appropriate solemnity at Shechem on Mount 
Ebal, or, more probably, Mount Gerizim. 
On this occasion the priests were to utter 
particular imprecations against all the secret 
transgressors of the law, to which the people 
were to assent by responding ''Amen!'' at 
the end of each imprecation §. 

" Moses then developed a second time, and 
still more minutely than before, the con- 
ditions on which Jehovah, their God and 
king, would govern them. He cast a pro- 
phetic glance into the most distant futurity, 
while he declared the different destinies 
which awaited them to the latest genera- 
tions, according to their conduct in regard 
to the law. In full view of these conditions, 
and in order to impress them the more 
deeply on their minds, he caused the whole 
people, even the women and children, again 
to take a solemn oath of obedience; and 

$ Deut. xxix. 20. 

§ Deut. xxxvii. 2—26. 



170 



THE BIBLE HISTORY, 



[BOOK III. 



that, not only for themselves, but also for 
their posterity*. 

"The official duties of Moses were now 
closed. He commissioned Joshua, not as his 
successor, but as a military leader divinely 
appointed, to be the conqueror of the land of 
Canaan, and to portion it out among the 
victors. He delivered to the priests the 
whole book of the law, that they might 
deposit it in the sanctuary with the ark of 
the covenant. He also left them a song, in 
which he represented in the most vivid 
manner the perverseness of the nation, their 
future disobedience and punishment, repent- 
ance and pardon. This song the Hebrews 
were to commit to memory, that they might 
be aware of the consequences of disobedience, 

* Deut. xxviii. 1—68, xxix. xxx. 



and that, when the threatenings were ful- 
filled, they might think of the law and 
return to their duty. Finally, he viewed 
the land of Canaan from Nebo, the summit 
of Mount Pisgah ; and then this great man, 
and distinguished servant of God, was ga- 
thered to his fathers t. 

" By the institutions which he introduced, 
for the preservation of the knowledge of 
God, he was the means of conferring an 
invaluable favour, not only on the Hebrews, 
but on the whole human race ; a favour for 
which no wise or good man can withhold 
from him his gratitude, whatever objections 

I he may imagine can be brought against some 

I of his laws." 

f Deut. xxxi.— xxxiv. 



BOOK III. 
JOSHUA AND THE JUDGES. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE CONQUEST. 



After the death of Moses the Israelites re- 
mained encamped in the plains of Moab, with 
the river Jordan before them, prepared for, 
and expecting, the order for their advance 
into the land promised to their fathers. 

This pause on the borders of that land af- 
fords us a very suitable opportunity of con- 
sidering the grave questions — What claim 
had the Hebrews to the land they were about 
to invade with the intention to retain it for 
their own use 1 — what right had they to de- 
clare a war of utter extermination against 
nations who had never given them any cause 
of offence 1 

The answer which is now much relied upon 
is that of Michaelis, and, more lately, of J ahn. 
This answer alleges, that the Canaanites had 
appropriated to their own use the pasture- 
grounds occupied by Abraham, Isaac, and 



Jacob, and expelled from their possessions 
those Hebrews who had occasionally visited 
Palestine during their residence in Egypt; 
and now the Israelites were about to recover, 
sword in hand, the lands, wells, and cisterns 
which the Canaanites had usurped. This is 
very ingenious, particularly in the attempt 
to show that the Israelites had, daring their 
residence in Egypt, endeavoured to keep 
possession of the pasture-grounds in Canaan. 
But, from the passage referred to in proof of 
this*, it does not seem to us easy to gather 
this information ; and the whole statement 
seems to us so hollow and insubstantial, that, 
in the persuasion our readers will at once see 
it to be so, we shall spare the room which its 
refutation would occupy, and merely observe 
that no such claim, if substantiated, would 

* 1 Chron. vii. 20—29. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



171 



justify the avowed intention to exterminate 
the original inhabitants of the land, — who 
were there before Abraham came from beyond 
the Euphrates ; and that the Hebrews them- 
selves exhibit no anxiety about these pasture- 
grounds, of which so much is said ; but tell 
us plainly that, intending to become an agri- 
cultural people, they wanted the cultivated 
lands, the fields, the vineyards, the towns 
of the Canaanites. Besides, those who were 
most in want of pasture-grounds had already 
secured them on the other side Jordan. 

Dr. Hales takes still higher ground, which 
once seemed to us more stable than we are 
now inclined to regard it. He relies much 
upon an Armenian tradition recorded by 
Abulfaragi. This tradition states that Noah, 
before his death, divided the whole earth 
among his sons ; and Dr. Hales thinks he 
can find allusions to such a partition in 
such passages as those referred to below*. 
According to this account, the land of Canaan 
was in the portion assigned to Shem ; but 
we find it in the actual occupation of tribes 
descended from Ham ; and from this it is ar- 
gued that the Hebrews, as being descended 
from Shem, had a prior claim to the land, 
| and were therefore perfectly justified in 
taking it, if in their power, from the nations 
by which it had been usurped. 

Now, however desirable it might be to find 
some such ground to stand upon, we fear 
that it will not be found possible, on close 
inspection, to stand with confidence on this. 
In the first place, it does not seem likely 
that Noah knew much of the world, or 
concerned himself about dividing the earth 
among his sons, when, as yet, his descendants 
were few in number, and remained in their 
original tents. Besides, an unsupported 
Armenian tradition is a very precarious 
authority to rest upon ; and it is hard to 
find what support it receives from the 
Scriptural texts which have been adduced. 
And, if this original partition might be re- 
lied on, the Hebrews would have derived no 
particular claim to the land of Canaan from 
it, — that is, no better claim than any other 
of the many races descended from Shem 
might have produced. Taking all these 

* Deut. xxxii. 7—9; Ac ts. xvii. 26. 



things into account, together with the dis- 
tance of time since the supposed assign- 
ment of the land, we may very safely con- 
clude that no such claim was made by the 
Hebrews or apprehended by the Canaanites. 

The want of solidity in both these ex- 
planations rather damages than assists the 
question they were intended to elucidate. 

In this transaction there were, so to speak, 
two parties, God and the Hebrews. It occurs 
to us that a clearer view of it may be ob- 
tained if we consider, — first, the conduct of 
the Jews apart from their position as a pe- 
culiar people acting under the special direc- 
tions of God ; then to view the proceedings 
of God, apart from any connection with the 
Hebrews ; and, lastly, show how the interests 
and objects of both parties concurred in the 
same course of proceeding. 

We may then, for the moment, view the 
Hebrews as an army of oppressed people, 
escaped from Egypt, and seeking a country 
in which they might settle down as an agri- 
cultural nation ; and whose leaders had it in 
view to keep up among them a particular 
system of religion and law, through which 
only the people could be prosperous and 
happy, and through which only one peculiar 
and grand object which they had in view 
could be accomplished. 

This being their object, the direction which 
they did take was the only practicable one in 
which such a country as they sought could 
be found. The Nile and the Lybian deserts 
beyond cut off their retreat westward, as 
the Mediterranean did on the north, and 
a southern route would only have involved 
them deeper in the Egyptian territory. 
Now in this direction, which was the only 
one the liberated nation could take, Canaan 
was the only country which suited their pur- 
pose. The Arabian deserts were of course not 
suited to become the permanent residence of 
a settled people; and, consequently, during 
the forty years which they spent in those 
deserts, they were compelled to remain a 
nomade people, and to sustain the hardships 
and privations incident to that mode of life. 
The country of Seir, although, as being 
mountainous, desirable from its capabilities 
of defence, was not suited either for agri- 



172 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



culture or pasturage, and was, besides, in 
the occupation of a nation closely related to 
themselves, and whom they had no desire to 
molest. The country east of the Jordan was 
less suitable for agriculture than pasturage, 
and it was too open, and wanted those natural 
borders and defences which were essential to 
a people destined to live apart among the 
nations. Part of it they did however take 
possession of for pastoral uses; but the re- 
mainder was in the occupation of the de- 
scendants of Lot, with whom the Hebrews 
had no desire to interfere. 

The land of Canaan was in every way most 
suitable for them. The mountains and the 
sea, by which it was in every part inclosed, 
rendered it easy of defence against all inva- 
sion. It abounded in corn, oil, and fruits — 
in all productions and capabilities essential 
to settled life. Besides, this was the land 
which attached to itself all the memories 
capable of exciting the enthusiasm of such 
a people as the Hebrews. It was the cradle 
of their race. It was their historical land — 
the land in which their renowned forefathers 
fed their flocks for more than 200 years, 
and which was still the country of their 
fathers' sepulchres. 

Such considerations would direct their at- 
tention to Canaan rather than to any other 
of the neighbouring countries. And, their 
attention being directed to it, let us consider 
first the Hebrews in their simple character, 
as ancient Asiatics who had no country, and 
felt that they must obtain one, and whom we 
would not expect to take any other course 
than other ancient Asiatics would take in 
similar circumstances. Now in those times 
the doctrines of international law and of the 
balance of power were certainly in a very 
crude condition. If we were not very anxious 
to confine our statement within the narrowest 
possible limits, we could accumulate instances 
to show that long after this date no nation 
was considered entitled to hold its territories 
by any other right than that of being able to 
defend them. If one people desired the lands 
of another, the practical law was, "You have 
a right to our lands if you can take them; 
but if you cannot we have the better right. 
You have a right to try, and we have a right 



to resist! Let success determine the right." 
Nor was such a law so injurious as it would 
be now. In the first place, the actual oc- 
cupants had such advantages of defence as 
would suffice to protect them from merely 
vexatious aggressions ; and, as then, for the 
most part, nations were divided into small in- 
dependent princedoms, few great monarchies 
having been formed, the obstacles among 
them to a combination for any common ob- 
ject were so great, that established nations 
had little reason to fear invasion from any 
overwhelming force. 

Under this system we are convinced that 
no one questioned the right of the Israelites 
to try to get possession of Palestine — not 
even the nations against whom they acted. 
Let it also be borne in mind that the 
Canaanites were very far from being a de- 
fenceless set of people, whom the Israelites 
had nothing to do but to treat as they 
pleased. They were, for the most part, a 
numerous, brave, and warlike people, with 
fortresses and walled towns, with cavalry 
and chariots of war ; and that, so far was it 
from being an unequal match, that all the 
natural advantages were on the side of the 
Canaanites ; who had to encounter a not 
very highly disciplined multitude from the 
desert, encumbered with women, children, and 
flocks ; and of whom not more than one-fourth 
were fit to take a part in warlike operations. 

Thus much for the claim or right of the 
Israelites, if we place them on the same 
ground as that on which any other nation 
would at that time have stood in correspond- 
ing circumstances. 

But the leaders of the invaders determined 
that the interests of the nation required that 
the prior inhabitants should be totally ex- 
terminated. We are not to inquire just now 
into the point of view in which such a re- 
solution would be considered at the present 
day, seeing that the nation by which this 
resolution was formed was not a modern 
or a European people. The only question is, 
did policy require or recommend this course? 
For we may be sure of this, that, if any 
course were in ancient times judged ad- 
vantageous to a nation, no considerations of 
humanity or abstract justice were allowed for 



CHAP. I.J 



173 



one instant to -weigh against its execution. 
And we are not now considering the Jews in 
any other light than as an ancient Asiatic 
nation. Even at this day it is avowed, as a 
doctrine of international law, that one nation 
in its dealings with others is not bound to 
seek any interests but its own. In ancient 
times this doctrine was carried out to the 
full and broad extent, that a nation in its 
dealings with others had a perfect right to 
remove, even by the sword, every interest 
that interfered with its own. 

Now the leader of the Hebrews, deeming 
the objects which we have indicated to be 
essential to the existence and well-being 
of the nation, was convinced that these ob- 
jects could not be accomplished unless the 
Canaanites were entirely extirpated. He 
knew that the system which he sought to 
establish could not be upheld, but in a field 
clear for its operation. He knew that the 
unsettled conquerors of a settled people ge- 
nerally adopt the ideas and manners of the 
people they have overcome : and the man- 
ners and ideas of the Canaanites were not 
only so opposed to, and subversive of, those 
which he desired his people to retain, as to 
render the co-inhabitation of the land, by 
the two races, certain ruin to the people for 
whom he was bound to care, — but were in 
themselves so 1 very evil as to render that 
extirpation which policy required an act of 
divine and moral justice. Again, it was cer- 
tain that if the old conquered nations were 
allowed to remain inhabitants of the land, 
together with the conquerors, and that the 
land was able to sustain them both (which 
it certainly was not), they would cherish a 
very natural hatred against their conquerors, 
and such a desire of vengeance against them, 
as would render them watchful of all oppor- 
tunities which might offer of rising against 
them, and that with all the advantage which 
might be derived from an intimate acquaint- 
ance with their numbers and resources. 
This, while it would keep the nation in a 
state of constant fretfulness and excitement, 
would prevent them from dispersing them- 
selves abroad properly through the country, 
and of giving full and proper effect to the 
spirit of their institutions. 



We are satisfied that, however unsatis- 
factory these reasons may now appear, they 
are such as would have determined any 
ancient Asiatic nation to the course which 
the Hebrews were commanded to take; and 
this, without these special reasons, operating 
in the case of the Hebrews, which we have 
purposely reserved. 

Now, then, let us look to the part taken 
by God himself in this matter. 

If we believe the Bible, we must believe 
that, anciently, it was a part of the Divine 
plan in the government of the world to 
visit guilty nations with sudden and over- 
whelming punishments, by which they were 
utterly destroyed. Let us think of the 
Deluge, and of the " cities of the plain." 
Now God constantly declares that the na- 
tions of Canaan were at this time as ripe for 
such a punishment as Sodom and Gomorrah 
had been. The patriarchs were repeatedly 
told by God that the Canaanites generally 
had not yet reached that point of wicked- 
ness as would make their extirpation ne- 
cessary to prove the world to be subject to 
moral government : " their iniquity was not 
yet full." But it was full, as God foreknew 
that it would be, by the . time the Hebrews 
arrived from Egypt ; and then it pleased God 
to commission the sword of the Hebrews to 
execute his judgment upon the Canaanites, 
instead of giving that commission, as he had 
done in other cases, to the storm, the earth- 
quake, the inundation, or the pestilence. 
Shall we then allow our minds to dwell so 
exclusively on the sentence of extermination, 
and be quite unmindful of the long-suffering 
of God, who withheld his judgments for 
centuries, till the measure of their iniquities 
was completed, and who, in the mean time, 
gave them repeated warnings, through which 
the doom which hung over them might have 
been averted 1 

Here, then, the policy of God and the sup- 
posed policy of the Hebrews meet ; or rather 
the policy of God, as it respected both the 
Hebrews and the Canaanites, met in this one 
point — the extirpation of the latter. While 
the Jews required a vacant country, the jus- 
tice of God required that a country should 
be vacated for them. The course which, in 



174 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book III. 



cool abstract terms, would have been good 
policy for the Hebrews, but which would 
hare been savage conduct in them, — that 
course was sanctioned, was made imperative, 
by the righteous and long-delayed judgment 
of God upon a guilty people. Their guilt 
has never been questioned. They had no 
public faith or honour, and consequently no 
treaties could be formed with them. Their 
morals were corrupt in the extreme. Incest 
was common ; they practised fornication, and 
indulged unnatural lusts, in honour of their 
gods, upon whose altars human victims were 
also offered. There seems to have been a 
point beyond which the abominations of 
pagan idolatry were not allowed to proceed ; 
and as the punishments which followed, 
when that limit was once passed, evinced 
that the gods which those nations so se- 
dulously worshipped were unable to protect 
their adorers, they would thus, in their way, 
suggest that there was a power far above 
them 1 ? But after God had established his 
testimony in the world, first by the Mosaical, 
and afterwards by the Christian system, this 
mode of asserting his moral government ap- 
pears to have been more rarely employed. 

The Israelites, therefore, entered Canaan 
as the commissioned ministers of the Divine 
justice ; and as such they were under a solemn 
obligation to take that course which was 
also most conducive to their own interests, 
but from which, if it had rested on that 
ground only, their humanity might have 
shrunk. It was, therefore, made an inviolable 
law to the Hebrews that they should enter 
into no connection with these people; that they 
should not make them tributary, nor even 
admit them as subjects or slaves; but should 
cut off unsparingly all who fell into their 
hands, and in this manner warn the others 
to flee from the land where Jehovah was 
king. The decree of extermination must be 
understood as implying that the Canaanites 
might leave the country in peace if they 
chose. It seems that many of them betook 
themselves to flight, and, embarking on 
board Phoenician vessels, sailed to Africa, 
and there planted colonies. All, or at least 
the greater part, might have taken this 
course to save their lives and treasures ; and 



although we do not think that the Israelites 
could enter into treaty with them as idolaters, 
there is no reason to question but that, if 
they had chosen to renounce their idols, and 
to have remained in the country well disposed 
towards the Hebrews, they might, according 
to a proper construction of the Law, have 
been spared. We do not mean that the 
Hebrews wished to win converts by the 
sword. That they never did : nor, until 
their latter days, were they anxious to intro- 
duce strangers into their body. But if any 
nation had been convinced that the God of 
the Hebrews was the true and only God, in 
consequence of the wonders which he had 
wrought for them, and the victories he 
enabled them to achieve, and the impotence 
of their own gods before him, that nation 
would doubtless have been spared. But they 
seem rather to have chosen to abide the 
event of a war with the invaders. 

We pray, then, again, that it may be dis- 
tinctly understood that, in a conflict between 
men and men, there was no advantage on 
the side of the Hebrews, but rather the re- 
verse. Their invasion was not an irruption of 
the strong against the weak ; but an attempt 
to conquer, with equal arms, a well defended 
country, occupied by a numerous people of 
tried and well known valour. The Hebrews 
did not attempt to reduce the people of the 
Promised Land with smooth words, that they 
might oppress them afterwards ; but openly 
avowed their intentions, and thereby exposed 
themselves to corresponding treatment from 
the enemy, should they prove successful. No 
objection can be made to the supernatural 
assistance afforded to the Hebrews by God, 
for in all these contests among ancient 
nations, the gods of the respective parties 
were understood to be deeply interested, and 
engaged to protect their worshippers, and to 
promote their views as far as they were able. 
And struck as the Canaanites were by the 
prodigies wrought by Jehovah, they looked 
to their gods for the same kind of assistance, 
and expected them to fight on their behalf 
against the God of the Hebrews. We have 
no right, therefore, to make a complaint for 
them which they did not make for themselves. 
They more probably, in the result of the 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



175 



contest, quarrelled with, their own gods for 
their impotence or insufficient assistance, I 
than objected to the assistance which Jeho- 
vah rendered to his people. This was the : 
war theology of the ancient nations ; and we ! 
meet with it at every turn, not only in the 
Bible, but in all ancient history. 

The particular consequences which resulted 
from the neglect or obedience of the Hebrews 
to their commission, are involved in the 
historical statements to which we now 
proceed. 

It was now about " the time of barley 
harvest," that is, about the vernal equinox, 
when the river Jordan is swollen, and over- 
flows its banks, from the melting of the 
snows on Anti-Lebanon, Hermon, and the 
mountains of Syria. Trusting to the obstacle 
which the river at this time offered, the 
Canaanites were under no apprehension of 
immediate attack, although they well knew 
by this time that the Israelites intended to 
advance into the country, nothing less than 
the conquest of which they contemplated. 
The interval does not appear to have been 
applied to any purpose of preparation by 
the inhabitants. The number of small states, 
among which the land was parcelled out, 
probably offered a serious obstacle to any 
extensive and formidable combination for a 
common object, — at least until the danger 
should become more immediately pressing. 
However, those Canaanites who inhabited 
that quarter of the Country, in which the 
Hebrew host now appeared, were filled with 
i consternation, — not so much on account of 
I the Israelites themselves, it would seem, as 
on account of their God, — that great and 
terrible God who had wrought such unheard- 
of wonders for them. The passage of the 
Red Sea, of which they had heard long 
before, from various quarters — perhaps, 
among others, from the Egyptians — had, 
from its grandeur and important results, 
made a profound impression upon them. 
And when they saw the people, thus wonder- 
fully delivered and helped, appear on their 
borders, many of the Canaanites despaired 
entirely that any long-continued or effectual 
stand could be made against them. Joshua 



learned all this by two spies whom he had 
secretly sent over the river, and who had 
got into the city of Jericho, where they had 
been concealed in the house of a woman 
named Rahab. From her they received this 
information; and she added: " As soon as 
we had heard these things, our hearts did 
melt, neither did there remain any more 
courage in any man, because of you; for 
Jehovah, your God, he is God in heaven 
above, and in earth beneath."' 

At length the order came to pass the river. 
This order was delivered to Joshua, and was 
accompanied by a very solemn confirmation 
of his appointment as the chief destined to 
lead the chosen people to the conquest of 
the Promised Land. Success was assured to 
him : — " There shall not any man be able to 
stand before thee all the days of thy life;"* 
but at the same time he was warned that 
this success depended upon his entire con- 
formity to the form and spirit of the theocracy. 
" This book of the law shall not depart out 
of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate 
therein day and night, that thou mayest 
observe to do according to all that is written 
therein : for then thou shalt make thy way 
prosperous, and then thou shalt have good 
success." f The authority of Joshua, who 
was at this time about eighty-four years of 
age, was recognised very cheerfully by the 
people ; and indeed it may be said that his 
brilliant career was disturbed by none of 
those popular risings and discontents which 
had rendered the administration of Moses so 
laborious and difficult. 

The overflowing Jordan was passed by a 
miracle analogous to that which occurred at 
the Red Sea. It took place on the tenth 
day of the first month, wanting only five 
days to complete forty years from the day 
the Israelites left Egypt on the fifteenth day 
of the first month. 

On that day the ark of the covenant, by 
the divine direction, was borne by the priests 
before the body of the people on their march, 
about 2000 cubits, or 1000 yards. As soon 
as the feet of these priests touched the brim 
of the waters of the river, the waters imme- 
diately recoiled upwards, stood, as it were, 
* Josh. i. 5. | Josh. i. 8. 



176 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. j 



in heaps, and went backwards a considerable 
way, while the lower waters pursued their 
course to the Dead Sea, leaving their channel 
dry. Then the priests bearing the ark 
entered the bed of the river, and stood still 
when they had reached the middle, while 
the people passed hastily below them, at the 
distance of 2000 cubits. The ark, with the 
priests standing, as it were, to protect them 
from the fear and danger of being over- 
whelmed by the incumbent mass of waters. 
As soon as the people had all passed over, 
then the priests also proceeded to the farther 
bank with the ark; and no sooner did the 
soles of their feet touch the dry land, than 
the suspended waters were loosened, and 
returned to their place, overflowing the 
banks as usual. 

" The passage of this deep and rapid, 
though not wide, river," observes Dr. Hales, 
" at the most unfavourable season was more 
manifestly miraculous, if possible, than that 
of the Red Sea ; because here was no natural 
agency whatever employed ; no mighty wind 
to sweep a passage, as in the former case; 
no reflux of the tide, on which minute philo- 
sophers might fasten to depreciate the miracle. 
It seems, therefore, to have been providen- 
tially designed to silence cavils respecting 
the former ; and it was done at noon-day, in 
the face of the sun, and in the presence, we 
may be sure, of the neighbouring inhabitants, 
and struck terror into the kings of the 
Canaanites and Amorites westward of the 
river." 

As an enduring record of this memorable 
event to the latest posterity, Joshua was 
commanded to erect two monuments, one in 
the bed of the river, before the waters 
returned, formed of twelve stones, one for 
each tribe, taken from the shore; and the 
other composed of the same number of stones, 
upon the bank, near Gilgal. The mention of 
these monuments, and others of the same 
kind elsewhere, suggests whether they may 
not have offered some analogy to the various 
remains called Druidical, which are now 
found in Syria and in all parts of the world. 

The first encampment of the Israelites in 
the Land of Promise was at Gilgal, close by 
the monument they had thus erected, in the 




| Stones of Memorial.] 




[Monumental Pillars. | 



plain of Jericho. Here, the day after the 
passage of the Jordan, the rite of circum- 
cision, which had been intermitted since the 
departure from Egypt, was, by the Divine 
command, renewed; and the ceremony was 
performed on all the descendants of the 
generation that perished in the wdlderness. 
They were then qualified to celebrate the 
passover, which also had been intermitted 
from the second time of its celebration at 
Sinai. The first passover in the land of 
their inheritance was accordingly celebrated 
on the fourteenth day of the same month. 
Some writers have censured the Israelites 
for not taking advantage of the panic of the 
Canaanites at the miraculous passage of the 
Jordan, but allowing them time to recover 
themselves, and prepare for war; but such 
objectors forget that these acts of obedience 
to the law formed, under their theocratical 
government, the best possible preparation 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



177 



for the enterprise that lay before them. It 
would, in fact, be wrong to overlook the 
signal act of faith involved in their submis- 
sion to the painful operation of circumcision 
in the face of their enemies, relying upon 
the divine protection till they were healed. 
This seems to intimate that the recent events 
had made a very salutary impression upon 
them. 

As God never worked miracles that were 
unnecessary, or longer than they were neces- 
sary, the miraculous supply of manna, which 
had formed their chief subsistence for forty 
years, ceased the day after this third cele- 
bration of the passover ; for they were now 
able to obtain a sufficient supply of man's 
ordinary food from the products of the land 
which they had now entered. 
_ It was clear that their first military opera- 
tions must be against Jericho — " the city of 
palm-trees," — which appears to have been at 
that time one of the most important and 
strongest cities of Palestine. Joshua was 
accordingly surveying it one day, about 
this time ; and, as the art of taking fortified 
places was then in its infancy, he was per- 
haps giving way to despondency at the 
apparently impregnable character of the 
place, when he suddenly saw before him a 
warrior with a drawn sword in his hand. 
The undaunted Hebrew challenged him, 
"Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" 
But on receiving the answer, " Nay ; but as 
captain of Jehovah's host am I now come," 
accompanied by the same injunction which 
Moses had received from the burning bush 
in Horeb, " Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, 
for the place whereon thou standest is holy," 
he became aware of the sacred character of 
the personage who appeared before him; 
and, humbling himself to the dust before 
him, he expressed his readiness to receive 
his commands. He was then instructed that 
the Lord had determined to strengthen the 
impression which had already been made 
upon the Canaanites, by causing the fall of 
Jericho before the Israelites, in such a 
manner as should demonstrate that One 
greater than the gods of Canaan fought for 
them. 

According to these instructions, the whole 



host of Israel marched in solemn procession 
around the city, before the ark borne by the 
priests. From all that vast host not a sound 
was heard save the tramp of their innume- 
rable feet, and the notes of the seven 
trumpets of rams' horns, which were sounded 
by as many priests attending the ark, and 
which must have drawn the attention of the 
wondering people, who thronged the walls of 
Jericho, to that as the principal object in the 
procession. This tour of the city was repeated, 
daily, for six days. But on the seventh day 
this circumambulation was repeated seven 
times ; and when the seventh tour was com- 
pleted, the silence which the Hebrews had 
hitherto observed was suddenly broken by 
one tremendous shout, which their united 
voices poured forth. At that sign the walls 
of Jericho fell level with the ground; and 
the triumphant, and now excited, host 
rushed from every side into the astonished 
city. Their first care was to place the hos- 
pitable Rahab and her family in a place of 
safety; and then the sword and fire were 
allowed to work their terrible mission with- 
out stint. Every creature that breathed in 
that city, of man or beast, was slain, and, 
after the prey, of metal only, had been 
collected, the place was set on fire, and 
levelled to the ground. In fact, the place 
had been devoted to total destruction by the 
vow of clierem, and was dealt with accord- 
ingly. And being thus an accursed, or 
devoted thing, Joshua, in the spirit of 
prophecy, denounced — what was held by the 
Jews the greatest of calamities — the loss of 
all his children, upon the person who should 
ever attempt to rebuild it. This happened 
accordingly to Hiel of Bethel, in the time of 
king Ahab*. In the case of a city devoted 
under this vow, nothing was preserved but 
the metal, and that was, as a consecrated 
thing, delivered into the sacred treasury. It 
is interesting to learn that, not only silver 
and gold, but "vessels of brass and of iron" 
were among the spoils of Jericho thus pre- 
served and consecrated. 

The miraculous overthrow of Jericho, and 
the terrible execution which had been inflicted 
on it, made upon the inhabitants of the land 

* Compare Josh. vi. 26 with 1 Kings xvi. 34. 



178" 



THE BIBLE HISTOliY. 



[BOOK III. 



the profound impression which was intended. 
The fame of Joshua " was noised throughout 
all the country." But no combination was 
made against this formidable invasion. Con- 
siderable confidence might still be placed in 
those defences which, it must have seemed, 
the Israelites could not carry without the 
miraculous interposition of their God; and 
every city, or, which was nearly equivalent, 
every small state, was left to defend itself as 
it best could. 

Joshua proved himself a man eminently 
qualified for the duties which devolved upon 
him. Considering that now his immense 
camp required to be supplied with food from 
the natural resources of the land, he deemed 
it advisable that it should remain in that 
fruitful plain where it then lay, making it, 
in short, his head-quarters, from which suit- 
able detachments might, as occasion offered, 
be sent upon military service. As soon, 
therefore, as the proper arrangements had 
been made in the camp, Joshua sent some 
spies to bring him an account of the city of 
Ai, which lay about ten or twelve miles. 
These men thought so lightly of the place, 
that they advised him to send only a small 
force against it. He accordingly sent 3000 
men. This force received from the men of 
Ai a most unexpected and discouraging 
repulse, with the loss of thirty-six men. This 
was a heavy blow, from the encouragement 
it was calculated to offer the Canaanites by 
teaching them that notwithstanding the 
protection of their mighty God, the Israelites 
were not absolutely invulnerable. Joshua 
was .so sensible of this, that he applied to 
God (probably by urim and thummim) to 
learn the reason of this reverse, after the 
general promise of victory to the Hebrews. 
The answer was, that a sacrilege had been 
committed, by some of the devoted things of 
J ericho having been secreted, and that Israel 
could not prosper until the abomination was 
purged from out the camp. Joshua, there- 
fore., took immediate measures for detecting 
the criminal, who, when taken by lot, proved 
to ba one Achan, of the tribe of Judah. He 
confessed that from the spoils of Jericho 
he had secreted, for his own use, a hand- 
some mantle of Babylonish manufacture, two 



hundred shekels of silver, and an ingot of 
gold, weighing fifty shekels, and that they 
remained hid in the earth within his tent. 
By this, Achan, according to the old laws 
and usages of devotement, had brought upon 
himself and all that belonged to him the 
terrible doom of cherem under which Jericho 
itself had perished. He, therefore, with all 
his family, his cattle, and his goods, together 
with the things by which his covetous heart 
had been tempted from a most sacred obliga- 
tion, were taken to a valley outside the 
camp, where all that lived were stoned to 
death, and their bodies, together with the 
goods, consumed by fire ; after which a large j 
cairn, or mound of stones, was raised by the 
people over the ashes, as a monument of this 
awful execution to future times. 

After this, J oshua in person undertook a 
new expedition against Ai. He took 30,000 
men with him, and resorted to a stratagem 
which seems to have subsequently become a 
favourite one with the Israelites, as it was 
afterwards among other nations. He placed 
25,000 of his men in ambush behind the 
city ; and with the remaining 5000 advanced 
openly to the assault. The people of Ai, 
encouraged by their former success, went 
out to meet them; on which the Israelites 
retreated, and the people of Ai, thinking 
they fled before them, as on the former 
occasion, pursued them with considerable 
ardour. When the defenders of the city 
were thus withdrawn to a considerable dis- 
tance, the larger body which had lain in 
ambush, rose, and entered the town without 
the least resistance. They set it on fire; 
and when the retreating Israelites beheld j 
the signal of the ascending smoke and flames, 
they turned round upon their pursuers with j 
such vigour, that they began to think of | 
retreating to their strong city. But when ! 
they looked back and saw it in flames, they j 
were filled with consternation, and still [ 
more, when they beheld the main body of 1 
the Israelites advance forth from the city 
against them. Thus hemmed in between j 
two forces, the late pursuers were filled with j 
consternation, and made but an impotent 
resistance. They were all destroyed, with ! 
the exception of the king, who was taken 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



179 



alive. The united force then returned to 
Ai ; and the fate of that town was even as 
the fate of J ericho had been. The number 
of the Canaanites that perished that day was 
12,000, being, in fact, the whole population 
of the place. The captive king was slain, 
and his body hanged upon a tree till even- 
tide, when, according to the Jewish law*, it 
was taken down. It was then buried in one 
of the gates of the town — or rather, a large 
heap of stones was raised over it there. No 
one can deny that this was a most revolting 
act. All that can be said in its justification, 
is involved in the considerations which we 
had occasion to state at the commencement 
of this chapter. To put him to death was a 
sacred duty to the Hebrews ; and apart from 
that, of which we have already sufficiently 
treated, the manner of his death only is open 
to objection ; and that, it will be observed, 
although ignominious, was by no means 
cruel. But, in fact, it were easy to show 
that even in wars which are not of an un- 
usually savage - character, or which were not 
wars of extermination, it was customary to 
take the chiefs prisoners if possible, for the 
purpose of subjecting them to a public 
execution, not merely to punish them, but 
to intimidate others by the terror of the 
example. History is full of this — the history 
of all nations. In the east the practice is 
not yet extinct; and the execution of the 
king of Ai will bear no comparison with the 
decapitation of Saoud, the Wahabee chief, at 
Constantinople, when we consider the distance 
of time and place, and the encouraging 
assurances which that unfortunate personage 
had received f. In this, then, it appears 
that the worst that can be said is, that the 
Hebrews were not superior to other nations 
of those and long subsequent times. And 
certainly we are not disposed to contend that 
they were superior in anything, and are 
willing to allow they were inferior in 
many things — except in their religious system 
— to the nations around them. These observa- 
tions must be extended in their application 
to any incidents of a similar kind which may 
hereafter occur. 

* Deut. xxi. 23. 

f He was paraded over the city for three days before Ins 
execution. 



This second victory at last roused the Ca- 
naanites from the stupor in which they had 
lain; and the too sure presentiment of the 
fate which awaited them, unless energetic 
measures were taken, led them to take mea- 
sures for repairing the errors into which 
they had fallen at the first, by combining to 
resist the storm which threatened to desolate 
the land. A general league was therefore 
formed by the princes of the numerous small 
states of different races, by which the southern 
part of Palestine was occupied. The republic 
(for such it seems to have been) of Gibeon, 
was nearly in the centre of this coalition, 
and was composed of the city so called, with 
three others, in the occupation of a tribe of 
Hivites. As Gibeon was but eight miles 
south by west from Ai, it might fairly expect 
to receive the first brunt of the approaching 
war. The inhabitants were much alarmed 
at this prospect, and greatly doubted the 
result. They deemed it far better to allay 
than to defy the approaching storm. But 
they knew that the Hebrews would enter 
into no alliance with the inhabitants of the 
country. They therefore resorted to a very 
singular stratagem to achieve their object. 

The ambassadors whom they sent to the 
Hebrew camp assumed the exhausted ap- j 
pearance and travel-worn attire of men who j 
had arrived after a long journey, and pre- 
sented themselves before Joshua as the ' 
envoys of a far-distant people, who, hearing, i 
even in their remote seats, the wonders j 
which God had wrought for his people, had j 
sent the present messengers to congratulate i 
them, and to seek the friendship and alliance I 
of a nation so highly favoured. The sus- 1 
picions which the people at first seemed I 
disposed to entertain were lulled by the 
delicate and skilful flattery which the state- 
ment of the strangers involved ; and all 
doubt was removed when the men appealed 
to their dry and mouldy bread, which they 
declared was hot from the oven when they 
left their homes ; and to the rent skins which 
contained their wine ; their worn and travel- 
stained clothes and sandals,— all of which 
they vowed to have been new when they 
commenced their journey. By this Joshua 
himself was deceived ; and he made a peace ' 



180 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book Sit. 



and alliance with them, confir ned by the 
oaths of " the princes of the cc agregation." 
The issue, however, impressed upon them 
the necessity of seeking the cou nsel of their 
divine King before they con eluded such 
important engagements in time to come : for 
three days had not passed before they dis- 
covered that these pretended strangers, with 
whom they had formed this anomalous 
treaty, were their near neighbours the 
Gibeonites. However, out of regard to the 
oaths which had been taken, and notwith- 
standing the guile which had been practised, 
it was determined to exempt them from the 
general doom of the Canaanites; while, to 
punish their deceit, they were reduced to a 
kind of bondage, it being made obligatory 
upon them to supply a sufficient number of 
men to discharge the laborious offices of 
drawing water and hewing wood for the 
camp and the tabernacle. This afforded to 
the faithless Canaanites a memorable ex- 
ample of a regard for treaties, and for the 
sacred sanction of an oath ; while the services 
imposed upon the Gibeonites rendered a 
most acceptable relief to the persons by 
whom those offices had hitherto been per- 
formed. This service of the Gibeonites be- 
came easier to them when the Israelites 
were settled and dispersed in the land of 
promise ; for they had then no longer to hew 
wood and draw water for the whole camp, 
but only for the tabernacle, and for the 
temple afterwards. 

This defection of the Gibeonites from the 
common cause greatly increased the embar- 
rassments of the princes of southern Canaan, 
as the state of Gibeon seems to have been 
one of the most important of the several 
small states in that part of the country. 
Considering this in connection with the un- 
restrained progress which the Hebrews had 
hitherto made, the king of Jerusalem, by 
name Adoni-zedek, who seems to have been 
the head of the league which had been 
formed, saw that the time for action was 
fully come ; and it was judged best to com- 
mence with the comparatively easy task of 
punishing the Gibeonites for their dis- 
couraging defection. Accordingly, this king, 
with four allied or tributary princes, laid 



siege to the important city of Gibeon. It 
seems that all the kings who joined Adoni- 
zedek on this occasion were Amorites, and 
that tribe or nation may be supposed to have 
been animated by more than the general 
dread and hatred of the Hebrews, on account 
of the destruction of the kindred state which 
Sihon had ruled, on the other side Jordan. 
The Gibeonites being greatly alarmed, sent 
to Joshua to invoke his assistance, in virtue 
of the covenant which had been formed with 
them. He instantly complied. Taking a 
strong force with him, a rapid night march 
brought him suddenly upon the Amorites, 
who were defeated with great slaughter. 
Those that fled by the way of Bethoran he 
pursued to Azekah, and to Makkedah*. On 
the pursuit to the former of these places the 
Lord thought fit to demonstrate, as usual, 
that a Superior Power fought for Israel, by 
causing a tremendous shower of great stones, 
whereby far greater numbers of the Canaan- 
ites were destroyed than by the sword of the 
Hebrews. Thus persecuted from the heavens 
above, and pressed by the Israelites in the 
rear, the survivors dispersed themselves, and 
continued their flight in different directions ; 
and, probably, under the shelter of the 
advancing night, would have escaped to their 
fortified places, had it not pleased God to 
prolong the light of day, that the Israelites 
might see to overtake and to destroy the 
fugitives. No sooner did Joshua regret the 
approaching night, and reflect that a con- 
tinuance of daylight alone was wanting to 
complete his victory, than he received within 
himself the assurance that God could and 
would grant even such a favour ; and, there- 
fore, under that impulse, and admirably 
exemplifying that faith which believes that 
nothing is too hard for the Lord, he cried 
aloud, " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; 
and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." 
And, accordingly, the sacred narrative tells 
us, " The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, 



* The relative position of these places was thus: — Be- 
thoron (the Nether), twelve miles west by south from 
Gibeon; Azekah, eight miles south of Bethoron; and 
Makkedah, six miles south by east from Azekah; in all, 
about twenty-six miles; but the direct distance between 
Gibeon and both Azekah and Makkedah would have been 
little more than seventeen miles. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



181 



until the people had avenged themselves 
upon their enemies. Is not this written in 
the book of Jasher ? So the sun stood still in 
the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go 
down about a whole day. And there was no 
day like that before it or after it, that J e- 
hovah hearkened unto the voice of a man : 
for Jehovah fought for Israel" That the sun 
and the moon stood still no one now sup- 
poses. The effect required might be produced 
without to that extent deranging the system 
of the universe. The system of astronomy 
then, and until within a recent period, uni- 
versally prevalent, taught that both the sun 
and the moon had a rotatory motion around 
the earth ; and that the phenomena of day 
and night were caused by that motion, as in 
fact they appear to be. We do not read in 
the sacred text that God himself declared 
that the sun and moon stood still on this 
occasion. If we suppose that God intimated 
to the heart of Joshua that He would grant 
him a miraculous prolongation of the day, if 
his faith were of such strength as to ask for 
it publicly at the head of his army, we may 
conclude that Joshua would make that re- 
quest in such terms as, according to his own 
conceptions, were proper to be employed in 
asking for such a miracle, — and this was, 
that the sun and moon might be arrested in 
their courses, which he thought alone ade- 
quate to produce the effect required, — or 
rather, which he thought must happen if the 
favour were granted which he was inspired 
to ask. God granted his request, and the 
day was prolonged as he desired. The his- 
torians of the times recorded the fact ac- 
cording to what appeared to them, and 
agreeably to what was then thought to be 
true astronomy; and, accordingly, the sun 
and moon appearing, and being deemed not 
for several hours to have moved forward in 
their courses, both the author of the book of 
Jasher, and Joshua himself, so record it in 
their several books. Although Joshua wrote 
his book under the direction of a divine 
assistance, we have no reason to conclude 
that God would interpose to prevent him 
from recording the fact in this manner. " If 
God had inspired Joshua to relate this fact 
in a manner more agreeable to true astronomy, 



unless he had also {inspired the world with a 
lilce astronomy to receive it, it would rather 
have tended to raise among those who heard 
and read of it, disputes and oppositions of 
science falsely so called, than have promoted 
the great ends of religion intended by it."* 

That the day was prolonged, and that the 
apparent progress of the sun and moon was 
stayed, are the facts of this great miracle. 
How these effects were produced, is a question 
which has been largely discussed, and on 
which very various opinions have been en- 
tertained. It is our belief that no positive 
conclusion can be arrived at on this point. 
So signal a miracle, regarded merely as 
enabling the Hebrews to complete their 
victory, has seemed to many persons an 
uncalled for and disproportionate manifesta- 
tion of divine power. But they should con- 
sider that nothing was better calculated 
than this to confirm the faith of the Hebrews, 
by demonstrating that the greatest of the 
heathen gods — the sun and moon — were His 
creatures, at his disposal, and under his 
control; while the same thing was exceed- 
ingly calculated to shake the confidence of 
the Canaanites in the gods to whom they 
looked for safety and deliverance, and to 
convince them that He who fought for the 
Hebrews was mightier than they. It was 
calculated to encourage the one party and 
to dishearten the other in nearly the same 
proportion. 

To return to the history. The five kings 
who had escaped both the sword and the 
shower of stones, being now well satisfied 
that all was lost, betook themselves ta the 
shelter of a cave near Makkedah, in which 
they hoped to remain undiscovered until the 
pursuers were withdrawn. But their retreat 
was detected, and information of it brought 
to Joshua, who ordered the mouth of the 
cave to be closed up with large stones until 
the military operations of the day were com- 
pleted. Among these operations, Makkedah 
itself was taken, and Joshua made that place 
his present head-quarters, while parts of his 
force continued the pursuit of the fugitives. 
Some of them escaped to the fenced cities, 

* Shuckford, book xii., where the whole subject is very 
ingeniously and ably discussed. 



182 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



but the greater part of them were destroyed. 
When all the pursuers were returned to 
Makkedah, Joshua directed the five kings to 
be brought forth from the cave. They were 
thrown down before the congregation, and 
the chiefs placed their feet upon their necks, 
according to the old Oriental practice of 
military triumph, to which there are many 
allusions in Scripture, and which their re- 
spective sculptures indicate to have existed 
among the people of Egypt and of Persia. 




[Treading the conquered under feet.] 



They were then slain, and their bodies hung 
upon trees until towards evening, when, 
according to the law, they were taken down. 
The corpses were then thrown again into the 
cave, which was closed up by large stones. 
This hanging upon a tree was a posthumous 
punishment of ignominy, as was the burning 
of the dead body ; but the law prescribed no 
punishment which rendered the living ig- 
nominious. The remarks which have been 
made upon the execution of the king of Ai 

| apply equally to the present instance, which 
therefore calls for no further remark. 

J oshua, with the diligence of an able com- 
mander, availed himself of the panic which 
this signal victory was calculated to inspire, 
and overran the southern part of Palestine ; 
and, no longer terrified at the sight of walled 
towns, the Hebrews took, in rapid succession, 
the cities of Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Debir, 
and Hebron. The king of Gezir, named 

': Horam, attempted, indeed, to raise the siege 



of Lachish, but was defeated and utterly 
destroyed with all his people. 

In this short and very successful cam- 
paign, " Joshua smote all the country of the 
hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and 
of the springs, and all their kings : he left 
none remaining, but utterly destroyed all 
that breathed, as J ehovah the God of Israel 
had commanded."* He then returned to the 
general camp at Gilgal. 

These last conquests of Joshua, which 
brought most of the southern parts of Canaan 
under the power of the Hebrews, fairly 
roused the princes of the north, who hitherto 
had watched the progress of the storm at a 
distance. Jabin, king of Hazor, took the 
lead in organizing a most formidable league, 
whereby it was hoped that the Hebrew host 
might be crushed and overwhelmed at one 
blow. Not only the princes of Palestine 
Proper, but many high up among the moun- 
tains and valleys of Lebanon, and many from 
distant places beyond Jordan, were drawn 
into this grand alliance. The assembled 
host was compared to the sands upon the 
sea-shore for multitude. Profiting by their 
relations by land and sea with the Assyrians 
and Egyptians, some of the assembled nations 
had, after their example, a force in cavalry, 
in chariots of war, and offered a military 
aspect altogether new to the present race of 
Israelites and very formidable to them. They 
were at first alarmed ; but, full of confidence 
in the words of their leader, who had always 
conducted them to victory, and now called 
them to new triumphs, they followed with 
the utmost alacrity and ardour to what 
threatened to be the most formidable conflict 
in which they had yet been engaged. The 
rendezvous of the allies was at " the waters 
of Merorn," probably the lake Semochonitis, 
where they remained to organize their forces, 
and arrange the plan of the campaign : and 
here they lay, when Joshua, according to his 
usual tactics, having penetrated to Upper 
Galilee by rapid marches, fell suddenly upon 
them by surprise : taking his position so as 
to shut up their cavalry, and deprive their 
chariots of all scope for action, he carried 
terror and death into their ranks, and threw 

* Josh. x. 40. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



183 



them into disorder. The carnage among the 
allies was horrible, and the rout complete. 
The great body of those who escaped the 
first edge of the sword fled towards Sidon, 
westward, while ano&er stream of fugitives 
hastened eastward, towards Mizpeh, but they 
were in every direction so closely pursued 
that most of them fell by the way. J abin 
himself escaped for the present to his own 
city of Hazor. 

Joshua being now master of the immense 
spoils of the league, might have thought of 
employing against the remaining enemie3 
the chariots and horses which had fallen 
into his hands. But faithful in his obedience 
to all the commands of Jehovah, he burned 
all the chariots, and all the horses had been 
in the first instance ham-strung by his 
orders. Joshua had received a special com- 
mand to act thus ; but even without it, the 
injunctions of the law against a force in 
cavalry and chariots would probably have 
determined his conduct. The reasons for 
this are easy to find. Horses were only used 
in those early ages for war or parade, and 
were of comparatively little use in a moun- 
tainous country like Palestine. For riding 
and burden, asses, mules, and camels were 
preferred, and oxen for draught. And then so 
much importance was attached to the use of 
horses and chariots in war, that the possession 
of them was likely to tempt the Israelites to 
| foreign wars, in opposition to the Divine 
j intention to keep them separate from the 
nations in a compact territory. 

Joshua then hastened against the metro- 
politan city of Hazor, in which king J abin 
had taken refuge. It was reckoned, the chief 
of all the cities belonging to the confederated 
kings ; and when taken, the inhabitants were 
all cut off, and the town itself burnt to the 
ground. This was the only one of the cities 
standing on hills* which Joshua destroyed. 
The rest were preserved for the occupation 
of the Israelites, who took all the property 
they found in them for spoil. The men of 
all these cities were put to the sword ; but 

* This is doubtless the true meaning (and so the Sama- 
ri-an and Vulgate understand it) of what our version 
renders by " stood still m their strength," a phrase which 
conveys no particular meaning. 



it will be recollected that the towns were all 
taken by assault, and that the inhabitant 
males of these cities were their defenders. It 
appears such towns in the plains and valleys 
as fell into the hands of the Israelites were 
destroyed. The reason for this distinction 
is obvious. Seeing that so large a number 
of the men were required in general military 
operations, it was impossible for the Hebrews 
to occupy and defend all the towns which they 
took. They, therefore, retained only those 
which from their situation on the hills were 
the strongest and most easily defended ; and 
destroyed those in the plains which were the 
most exposed and the most difficult to defend. 

This and the former signal victories, con- 
nected as some of them are with manifest 
intimation that the Israelites were favoured 
by a Power which had no limit or control, so 
intimidated some of the Canaanites, that 
they appear to have left the country in 
search of new and more peaceful habita- 
tions. Some appear to have withdrawn into 
and beyond the northern mountains ; while 
others might find in the ships of their unmo- 
lested kindred, the Phoenicians, easy access 
to the remoter shores of the Mediterranean. 
Bochart and others have taken much pains 
to trace the fugitives in Asia and Africa. 
They seem to have been most successful in 
finding traces of nations or tribes of Ca- 
naanitish origin in the northern coasts of 
Africa. The Jews themselves have old tra- 
ditions to this effect. The thing is indeed 
highly probable in itself, and is well sup- 
ported by the corroborative circumstances 
which such writers have adduced; and this 
even without laying undue stress on the 
testimony of Procopius (living in the time of 
the Emperor Justinian), who, in his history 
of the Vandals, reports that in Mauritania 
Tingitana there was an inscription upon cer- 
tain pillars, purporting that " the inhabitants 
of the country had fled thither from the 
face of the robber Joshua, the son of Nun " 
The Scripture itself is silent in these matters, 
save that it incidentally transpires! that two 

t Josh. xxiv. 12. This had been foretold in ExoA xxih. 
28, and Deut. vii. 20; and as terms there employed seem 
more extensive, probably there were more than the two 
in&tances which are incidentally noticed. 



184 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK EEL 



Amoritish nations were "driven out" by 
" the hornet," which may be supposed to be 
the formidable insect which Bruce describes 
under the Arabic name of Zimb. No one 
who knows the East doubts the power of an 
insect-plague to drive a people from one 
country to another ; and there are Greek and 
Latin traditions, traced with learned inge- 
nuity by Dr. Hales, which describe nations 
thus expelled from their native seats in the 
east, and seeking a refuge in the west. The 
vindictive power that was supposed to pre- 
side over this dreadful scourge came to be 
worshipped at Ekron, in Philistia, through 
fear, the reigning motive of pagan super- 
stition, under the name of Baalzebub, or 
"Lord of the hornet." 

The victories which we have recorded 
gave the Hebrews a predominant power both 
in the north and south of the country ; nor 
was there, in the time of Joshua, any spirit 
or power in the remaining Canaanites to form 
any new combination against the invaders. 
A long and desultory warfare therefore 
ensued against the petty princes who occu- 
pied the unconquered portions of the country, 
a great number of whom were subdued in 
detail, and their strong cities taken by force 
of arms ; for it does not appear that any one 
town was surrendered without fighting, be- 
sides the cities which belonged to the 
Gibeonites. The manner in which this in- 
formation is conveyed in the Book of Joshua* 
clearly intimates that although it was not 
the Divine intention that the Canaanites 
should be spared to remain mixed with the 
Hebrews in the land which the latter were 
destined to occupy, yet that if, at least hypo- 
thetically, any city had submitted peaceably, 
from the conviction that the God who fought 
for the Hebrews was greater than all gods, 
and One whose power it was useless to resist, 
they would have been spared. But as it is, 
if we could overlook the peculiar circum- 
stances, and forget the infatuation which 

* " There was not a city that made peace with the chil- 
dren of Israel, save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon • 
all other they took in battle. For it was of the Lord to 
harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel 
in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they 
might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as 
the Lord commanded Moses." Josh. xi. 19, 20. 



prevented them from receiving those convic- 
tions which the prodigies wrought by 
J ehovah seem calculated to have inspired, it 
would be impossible to withhold our praise 
and sympathy for the spirit and courage with 
which they contended even to the last — 
even to the death — for the possession of the 
homes and hearths they had received from 
their fathers. 

It was not a part of the Divine intention 
that the Canaanites should be expelled all at 
once. It had, many years before, been an- 
nounced by Moses, that they would be driven 
out gradually before the Hebrews f. The 
principal reasons given for this was lest the 
land, being comparatively depopulated, " the 
beasts of the field " should multiply to the 
prejudice of the new occupants. This implies 
much more than it expresses. It shows that 
while the Israelites were in the first instance 
assisted, by potent miracles, to win great and 
comprehensive victories, thereby to gain a 
firm footing and a predominant power in the 
land, it was determined that they should 
pass by natural and progressive steps into 
and through their transition state as a 
nation. The small and disunited nations of 
Canaan were thus gradually to yield to the 
expulsive action of a united and increasing 
people, in the same proportion in which the 
wants of that people were developed. But 
besides this leading reason, that the Hebrews 
were only to get as much of the country as 
their numbers enabled them to occupy and 
defend, two others of much importance are 
also alleged. — One of these, that by having 
enemies left in the country, against whom 
the necessities of their position would com- 
pel them constantly to act, they might be 
properly trained to war and military service, 
of which they formerly knew little or no- 
thing J, but which was necessary in those 
ages to enable them to maintain themselves 
in the country they were to receive; the 
other, that by having among them a people 
of different habits and religion, their obe- 
dience to the system of doctrine and policy 
which they had been taught, might be suf- 
ficiently tried and exercised §. 

t Exod. xxiii. 28—30. $ Judges iii. ], 2. 

§ Josh, xxiii. 11, &c. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



185 



At the end of five years from the passage 
of the Jordan, the results of the war were, 
that thirty-one of the petty kings of Canaan 
had been defeated and dispossessed of their 
dominions. Among the natives extirpated 
or expelled were the gigantic Anakim in and 
about Hebron, whom there has been such 
frequent occasion to mention. Some of them 
sought a refuge in the country of the Philis- 
tines, where their descendants are found a 
long while after. But others appear to have 
returned, probably while the attention of 
Joshua was engaged by the affairs of the 
north, and re-established themselves in parts 
of their ancient seats, from which they were 
ultimately expelled by Caleb. 

In the sixth year it seemed that, as com- 
pared with the allotment of territory to the 
two tribes and a half beyond Jordan, suf- 
ficient to provide for three tribes more on 
the same liberal scale had been obtained. 
To recognise that God was the sovereign pro- 
prietor of the soil, and had the entire right 
to its disposal, his decision was appealed to 
by a solemn lot, to determine the particular 
tribes to which his first distribution of ter- 
ritory in the promised land should be 
assigned. By this course all jealousies were 
prevented which might have arisen, had the 
distribution been made by Joshua, or any 
other person, or body of persons, on their 
own authority. The lot consigned this ter- 
ritory to Judah, Ephraim, and the unpro- 
vided half tribe of Manasseh. The distinct 
manner in which the first provision was 
thus made for the very tribes which had 
received from Jacob the birthright and the 
double portion, while it served to intimate 
to the other tribes that the lot had not been 
fortuitously determined, must also have con- 
tributed in a considerable degree to give a 
further sanction to the superiority which the 
tribes of Judah and Ephraim had already 
begun to assume. 

This first division of lands took place in 
the year before Christ 1602. It is not 
usually in histories distinguished from what 
was really the second and final distribution ; 
but a careful view of the account of this 
matter which the Book of Joshua contains, 
will show that the distinction ought to be 



made ; and that the final distribution to the 
seven remaining tribes did not take place 
till some years after that by which provision 
was made for Judah, Ephraim, and the half 
tribe of Manasseh. 

Before the internal distribution to par- 
ticular families was made of the territories 
thus allotted, the aged Caleb presented him- 
self before the assembly, and reminded it 
that, besides the prolonged days which had 
been granted to himself and Joshua when 
they contradicted the "evil report" which 
the other spies gave of the land they had 
traversed, Moses had also promised that 
the land in which he had beheld the gigantic 
Anakim should be given to him for a pos- 
session, because he had " wholly followed 
Jehovah his God." He thankfully acknow- 
ledged that the Lord had, according to his 
promise, kept him alive for forty-five years, 
while the generation to which he belonged 
had perished : and that now, although four 
score and five years old, he was as strong 
and as able for council or war as in that day 
when Moses sent him to explore the land of 
Canaan. And although the land promised 
to him was now again in the possession of 
Anakim, and the towns they held were very 
strong, he was confident that God would be 
with him, and enable him to drive them out, 
if the grant made by Moses were now con- 
firmed. It was so; and he succeeded not 
only in expelling three chiefs of the Anakim 
who held possession of Hebron, but in get- 
ting into his hands the other strong town of 
Debir, which was upon the lands assigned to 
him. A circumstance connected with the 
taking of the latter place illustrates some of 
the customs of the time. Caleb caused it to 
be publicly known that he would give his 
daughter Achsah in marriage to whosoever 
should take this place for him. This enter- 
prise was undertaken by Othniel, the son of 
Caleb's brother, and who, in fact, had by 
custom the best right to the hand of his 
cousin, and who would have incurred some 
disgrace if he had allowed her to be won in 
this way by another. He succeeded, and re- 
ceived his reward. Hereafter we shall find 
Othniel's name among the judges of Israel. 
These customs — the absolute right of a 



186 



[book III. 



father to dispose of his daughter, or to pro- 
pose her as the reward of some perilous en- 
terprise — still exist in the East, and we meet 
with them often in Arabian histories and 
tales. 

The Ephraimites, to whose tribe Joshua 
belonged, seem to have considered that the 
promised and now granted provision for 
Caleb, implied the Divine intention that a 
similar provision should be made for Joshua 
himself, whose merits were as distinguished 
as those of Caleb on the same occasion, and 
j whose services had since been very great. 
They therefore gave him the choice of his 
inheritance; and he selected the city of 
Timnath-serah, in Mount Ephraim, which he 
repaired, and ultimately made the place of 
his residence. 

Another interesting circumstance arose in 
connection with the internal distribution of 
the territory allotted to the tribe of Judah. 
It seems that before the time of Moses, as 
long after, in most oriental nations, a female 
could not inherit land. If a man died, 
leaving daughters only, his property de- 
scended to his brother, or the children of his 
brother, overpassing the daughters. The 
propriety of this and other laws of landed 
inheritance was never so likely to be ques- 
tioned as by a people who had not hitherto 
possessed freehold properties, but had the 
prospect of such possessions immediately 
before them. Now there was a man of an 
eminent family in Manasseh, called Zelophe- 
had, who died, leaving five daughters, but no 
son. While the Israelites were in the plains 
of Moab, and the laws of inheritance had 
already become a subject of immediate in- 
terest, these women applied to Moses, repre- 
senting their case, and argued that if the 
inheritance which would have been the due 
of their father passed to another family, be- 
cause he had no son, then that family would 
in fact become extinct — a very terrible 
calamity to an Israelite, and calculated 
greatly to depress the already low estima- 
tion in which daughters, as compared with 
sons, were held. Moses felt much difficulty 
in this question, and reserved it for the spe- 
cial directions of God. The response was, 
that if a man had no sons, his daughters 



might inherit ; that if he had neither sons 
nor daughters, the inheritance should devolve 
to his brethren and their heirs ; but that if 
he had no brother, to the brothers of his 
father and their heirs ; and, failing these, to 
the nearest of kin. This determination 
seems to have been much canvassed; and 
some difficulties appeared, which induced 
the family chiefs of that branch of Manas- 
seh's tribe to which Zelophehad belonged, to 
apply to Moses, and to represent that females 
thus inheriting might perhaps marry into 
other tribes, and thus carry out of their own 
tribe a portion of its original property. 
Moses admitted the force of this objection, 
and decided that although such heiresses 
should be free to marry whoever they 
pleased, their choice should be limited to 
the tribe to which they belonged themselves. 
This determination was satisfactory to all 
parties, not excepting the daughters of Ze- 
lophehad; for they did more than was re- 
quired of them, by marrying into the fami- 
lies into which the inheritance would have 
descended, had their own claims been over- 
looked. 

Now, when the actual distribution of the 
allotted territory to the families of Manasseh 
took place, the daughters of Zelophehad ap- 
peared to claim the inheritance which de- 
volved to them under this decision, and 
which they accordingly received. 

It is impossible to estimate too highly the 
consequences of the law upon the position of 
the women among the Israelites. We know 
that the privileges to which any class of 
persons is eligible raises the condition and 
estimation of that class, even though it hap- 
pen that only a few can receive the actual 
privileges which have thi3 operation. On 
this rule, which, we think, is of universal 
application, it is impossible but that the 
eligibility of women to inherit landed 
estates must have had a most favourable 
influence upon their general condition. And 
we think the studious reader of the Bible 
will discover that women, among the He- 
brews, were far more favourably considered, 
and allowed a more prominent and distin- 
guished place in the social system after than 
before this law existed ; and he will see I 



CHAP. I.] 

cause to attribute to the operation of this 
same law the unquestionable fact, that the 
[ position of the women among the Hebrews 
' was far more free and independent than in 
any country of the ancient East (Egypt per- 
haps excepted), or than in any country be- 
yond Rome, after Rome came into existence: 
that it was more so than in the modern East 
is known to all. And we think it may not 
be going too far to affirm that the social 
rank which woman takes in all the countries 
of Christendom, as compared with countries 
which are not Christian, may very fairly be 
considered a remote result of this and some 
other laws, whereby Moses determined the 
1 social position which woman should occupy. 
And the social position of woman in any na- 
tion is the least uncertain test of that 
nation's moral civilization. 
The formal occupation, now taken of the 
| conquered territory, suggested a suitable 
occasion for the removal of the tabernacle, 
from the outskirts of the country at Gilgal, 
where it had so long remained, to a station 
more central and therefore more convenient 
for the resort of the tribes now about to 
spread themselves over the conquered land. 
Shiloh, in Ephraim, nearly in the centre of 
that land, was chosen for the purpose. In 
\ the way thither, and while the Hebrew host 
! still remained together, the opportunity was 
I taken to obey the command of Moses respect- 
ing the renewal of the covenant with God on 
the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim*. 

It is difficult for the mind of man to con- 
ceive a ceremonial more truly grand than 
that whereby the far-seeing Legislator had 
provided that the people should once more, 
before they took possession of their inheri- 
tance, declare their solemn acceptance of 
those institutions which had been given to 
them, and bindingly oblige them so to adhere 

* We are aware that the solemn ceremony at Ebal and 

Gerizim is placed earlier in the Book of Joshua ; but in 
> some way or other it appears to have got out of its proper 
| place, as the context shows. The order of the conquest of 
I Canaan, as related in that book, makes it manifest that 

this ceremonial could not have taken place sooner than 
; where we now place it. Geddes places it later still. But 

we cousider that when some of the tribes were about to 
: disperse to their new homes, and when the ark was about 
, being removed to Shiloh, which was but ten miles from 

Shechem, was the most obvious and probable occasion. 



187 

to them. And if Moses, who was never him- 
self in the promised land, had surveyed its 
whole extent, or the extent of the whole 
world, for a site most fitting for this great 
transaction, one could not have been found 
more appropriate than the twin mounts — the 
fair and fertile Gerizim and the blasted Ebal, 
with the long, narrow, and beautiful valley 
by which they are separated. Here in the 
first instance were set up the large stones, 
which being covered with plaster, after the 
Egyptian fashion, were written over "very 
plainly" with the principles of the law, that 
the people there assembled might be fully 
aware of that to which they were about to 
declare their obedience. Their sacrifices 
were offered upon a large altar, built upon 
Mount Ebal, of unhewn stones, according to 
the law. The ark, attended by the priests, 
remained in the valley below, while on each 
side, up either mountain, stood the thousands 
of Israel, none being wanting, from the 
chiefs, the Judges and the Levites, to the 
women, the children, and the stranger. All 
were there. In that vast audience, six tribes, 
Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulon, Dan, and 
jSaphtali, stood upon the barren Ebal, to 
pronounce the curses of the law upon the 
wrong-doer and the disobedient; and six, 
Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and 
Benjamin, upon the pleasant Gerizim, to pro- 
nounce its blessings upon the well-doer and 
the obedient. And as each clause of cursing 
or of blessing was pronounced, there rose, 
with one vast rushing voice from the living 
hills, the Amen ! " So be it ! " by which that 
vast multitude declared their assent to the 
announced conditions. 

After this (as we suppose) the congre- 
gation proceeded to Shiloh to set up the 
tabernacle, where it remained for above four 
hundred and fifty years. 

The two tribes and a half, which had 
lately been provided for, then proceeded to 
establish themselves in the territories which 
had been assigned to them. 

Of the history of the following five or six 
years we know but little. We have the most 
curiosity to know how the seven unprovided 
tribes disposed of themselves during this 
time. Most probably they remained in camp 



THE CONQUEST. 



188 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



( BOOK III. 



at Shiloh, around the tabernacle, as they did 
before at Gilgal. That some engaged in a 
desultory warfare with the unconquered 
states is scarcely questionable ; but that the 
first vigour of this warfare had considerably 
relaxed, is evident from the reproach of 
Joshua to the seven tribes, " How long are 
ye slack to go to possess the land which the 
Lord God of your fathers hath given you?" 
It seems then to have occurred to him that 
if the lands of the country were distributed 
in proper allotments to those tribes, without 
regard to their being conquered or uncon- 
quered, its own interests would induce each 
tribe to exert itself to gain possession of the 
territory which fell to it. It seemed that 
enough had been done by the nation at 
large ; and that the rest might be left to the 
particular tribes which were to be benefited. 
It had also become desirable that the large 
draft of 40,000 men from the tribes beyond 
Jordan, who had hitherto taken part in the 
enterprises of their western brethren, should 
be allowed to return to their homes. 

But some inconvenience had resulted on 
the former occasion from proportioning the 
parts without having surveyed the whole. 
It already appeared that the allotment of 
the tribe of Ephraim was not sufficient for 
its wants. This fact, by the bye, shows the 
perfect impartiality of the distribution, or, 
in other words, that it was really, as it pro- 
fessed to be, left to the Lord. For Ephraim 
was Joshua's own tribe, and therefore the 
one whom he might have been, of himself, 
the most inclined to favour. However, when 
the Ephraimites complained of their confined 
limits, they were permitted to subdue for 
their own use as much^more neighbouring 
territory as they wanted, before the dis- 
tribution to the other tribes took place. On 
the other hand, it appeared that the tribe of 
Judah had considerably more territory than 
it needed or could occupy, in consequence of 
which, when the actual extent of the whole 
country to be portioned out became better 
known, two of the smaller tribes, Simeon 
and Dan, received their shares out of the 
territory which had been at first assigned to 
Judah. 

Such circumstances clearly pointed out the 



advantage, if not necessity, of an actual 
survey of the whole country before the de- 
signed distribution to the unprovided tribes 
was made. Joshua therefore directed that 
each of the seven tribes should select three 
competent men, who should traverse the 
whole country, ^nd make a survey of it, 
bringing back the results entered carefully 
in a book. It would be curious to know 
whether an attempt at mapping the surveyed 
districts formed any part of this undertaking. 
It is only stated that they "described it ... . 
in a book," without mention of the nature of 
the description, save that the land was de- 
scribed " by cities," and " in seven parts." 
At all events this is the first example of a 
topographical survey on record : and it shows 
that there must have been some knowledge 
of geometry among the Hebiews ; and this 
had doubtless been acquired in Egypt. 

Seven months were occupied in this survey. 
At the expiration of which the surveyors 
returned with the requisite information in 
their books. The lots were then taken before 
the Lord in Shiloh; and that He, the Su- 
preme proprietor of the soil, did in fact 
regulate the resulting distribution must have 
appeared evident to all the tribes, by the 
circumstance that the portions thus assigned 
to them were, severally, in exact conformity 
with the descriptions which, two hundred 
and fifty years before, Jacob had, in his 
dying prophecy, given of the territory which 
each of his sons should inherit. The northern 
portion of the country, in after times called 
Galilee, was divided among the four tribes 
of Naphtali, Zebulon, Issachar, and Asher. 
The central portion, afterwards called Sa- 
maria, was given to the house of Joseph, 
that is, to Ephraim and the unprovided half 
tribe of Manasseh. And the southern part, 
which in aftertimes formed the kingdom of 
Judah as distinct from that of Israel, was 
allotted to the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, 
Simeon, and Dan, the patrimony of the two 
latter being, as just intimated, taken out of 
that which had been wholly assigned to 
Judah. 

Thus twelve tribes were provided for; as 
the tribe of Joseph was counted as two— 
Ephraim and Manasseh, and Levi was not 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CONQUEST. 



189 



counted at all. But the last-named tribe 
received from each of the others a certain 
number of cities, making forty-eight in all, 
each of them with a domain of between eight 
and nine hundred acres of land, for gardens 
and pasture-fields. Of these cities, the Ko- 
hathites received twenty-three, the Ger- 
shonites thirteen, and the Merarites twelve. 
Six of the forty-eight, three on each side 
Jordan, were appointed for cities of refuge, 
namely, Kadesh (in Galilee), Shechem, and 
Hebron, on the west; and Bezer, Ramoth- 
Gilead, and Golan, beyond the river. Thir- 
teen of the forty-eight cities were also 
assigned to the priests as distinguished from 
the other Levites; and it strikingly illus- 
trates the overruling providence which 
directed these matters, that the lot, by 
which all these arrangements were deter- 
mined, fixed these cities near each other, 
and also near what, several centuries after, 
was, by the erection of the temple at Jeru- 
salem, rendered the seat of their duties. 
Thus we see prospective arrangements made, 
in the secret providence of God, for a long 
subsequent event ; and not only for this 
event, but probably with reference to the 
ultimate separation of the Hebrew kingdoms : 
for all these towns were in what finally 
became the kingdom of Judah. 

This second and final division of territory 
took place in the year 1596 before Christ. 

The time was now come when the 40,000 
men of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of 
Manasseh, might be allowed to return to 
their own heritage beyond Jordan. In his 
farewell address to them, Joshua highly 
commended the fidelity with which they 
had fulfilled their engagement, in fighting 
with and for their unprovided brethren, 
after they had received their own inherit- 
ance; and he earnestly charged them to 
"Take diligent heed to do the command- 
ment and the law which Moses, the servant 
of Jehovah, charged you; to love Jehovah, 
your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to 
keep his commandments, and to cleave unto 
him, and to serve him with all your heart 
and with all your soul." With his blessing 
they then took their departure, greatly 
enriched by their equal share in the spoil of 



the Canaanites, which, we are told, consisted 
of " very much cattle, with silver, and with 
gold, and with brass, and with iron, and 
with very much raiment." This they were 
to divide with those who had remained at 
home to occupy and protect their own 
country. 

The departing body was so full of good 
feeling, that when they had crossed the 
Jordan, and entered their own territories, 
they bethought them of erecting a great 
altar, as a monument to posterity of the real 
connection between the tribes which the 
river separated. This transaction produced 
a strong sensation when the news of it was 
brought to Shiloh. The object of this pro- 
cedure was entirely misunderstood. The 
altar was taken to be a monument of separa- 
tion rather than of union. For as there 
could be but one altar for national worship, 
the erection of another altar beyond Jordan 
was judged to intimate an intention to form 
a separate establishment for worship in that 
country ; which, even if at first intended for 
the honour of the true God, would certainly 
in the end lead to idolatry and disunion; 
and, while it might recognise Jehovah as 
God, would overlook those obligations by 
which all the Israelites were bound to render 
service to him as their King. In short, the 
act, as viewed by the other tribes, was an 
overt act of rebellion, and, as such, they 
determined to punish it, unless a sufficient 
explanation could be obtained. The whole 
congregation assembled at Shiloh, ready to 
make war against the tribes beyond Jordan. 
But first they sent a deputation to ex- 
postulate with them, and to require an 
explanation. This deputation was suitable 
to the gravity of the occasion, consisting of 
Phineas, the son of the high-priest, and with 
him ten chiefs, one from each of the tribes 
west of the Jordan. On its arrival in Gilead, 
the deputation, assuming the fact to be as 
they supposed, proceeded to threaten the 
two and half tribes with punishment for 
their rebellion against Jehovah and the 
congregation. If they disliked the lands 
which they had received beyond the river, 
as being " unclean," or unhonoured with the 
presence of the tabernacle, or if they deemed 



190 



[book iii. 



it too hard for them to resort beyond 
the river to render the periodical service 
which the law required, then let them come 
and share with the other tribes in the 
country west of the river. The punishments 
which had befallen the whole congregation 
for the sin in the matter of Baal-peor and of 
Achan, were then mentioned for a warning. 

The two and half tribes were much dis- 
tressed at this imputation, and with much 
animation and eloquence repelled the charge, 
and explained that their object had been 
exactly to prevent the very alienation and 
separation of which they were accused of 
contemplating. After declaring this in 
general terms, they proceeded to explain 
their precise object more particularly, and 
we cite their words, because they very im- 
pressively intimate the general object of 
such erections. They had done it lest " your 
children might speak unto our children, 
saying, What have ye to do with Jehovah, 
the God of Israel 1 ? for Jehovah hath made 
Jordan a border between us and you ye 
children of Reuben and ye children of Gad ; 
ye have no part in Jehovah. So shall 
your children make our children cease from 
fearing Jehovah. Therefore we said, Let us 
now prepare to build us an altar, — not for 
burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, but that it 
may be a witness between us, and you, and 
our generations after us ... . that your chil- 
dren may not say to our children in time to 
come, Ye have no part in Jehovah."* 

An explanation so much in agreement 
with the spirit and object of the Mosaic 
institutions, gave great satisfaction to the 
ambassadors, and afterwards to the people 
who awaited the result at Shiloh. They 
blessed God, and dispersed to their several 
homes. 

The tribes beyond Jordan gave the name 
of Ed (the witness) to the monument they 
had erected, and which continued long after 
to bear its testimony to the unity of Israel. 

Joshua appears to have survived about 
fourteen years after this, during which he 
lived for the most in his own city of Timnath- 
serah. During these years, the people, being 
now fairly established in the country, and 

* See Josh. xxii. 21 -29. 



finding that they had land enough for their 
present wants, do not seem to have been 
much engaged in war, in order to obtain 
possession of those parts of the country 
which still remained in the hands of the 
Canaanites. It is not unlikely that Joshua 
himself was desirous before he died to see 
their habits take the intended direction 
towards agriculture. And, no doubt, during 
those years in which the war was slackened 
or suspended, much progress was made in 
that transition by which the Hebrews were 
to pass into the condition of an agricultural 
people. 

When Joshua felt that the day of his 
death was at hand, he called the people 
together, that before he died he might have 
the satisfaction of again receiving the pledge 
of their obedience to their Divine King and 
his institutions. He addressed them, and 
after reminding them of the miracles which 
had been wrought for them, and the victories 
and blessings with which they had been 
favoured, he called upon them to purge 
away the idolatry which still lurked among 
them — no longer to serve "the gods which 
their fathers served on the other side of the 
flood [Euphrates], and in Egypt" but to 
devote themselves in entire sincerity and 
truth to Jehovah. He demanded that they 
should at once decide the alternatives before 
them — either to serve Jehovah wholly, or 
the gods of their fathers and of the nations 
among whom they now dwelt; adding, "But 
as for me, and my house, we will serve 
Jehovah." To which the people heartily 
responded, " We also will serve Jehovah ; 
for he is our God." He explained to them j 
the obligations which that declaration in- J 
volved ; but they repeated it again, and 
once more in the usual terms of a solemn 
covenant. The tenns of this covenant Joshua 
wrote down in the book of the law ; and for j 
a more public testimonial of this solemn 
engagement, he set up a great stone undev 
an oak that grew hard by the tabernacle, 
and, in conformity with the ideas so usually 
connected with these memorials, he said, 
" Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto 
us ; for it hath heard all the ivords of Jehovah 
which he spake unto us : it shall be therefore 



CHAP. II.] 



PROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



191 



a •witness unto you, lest ye deny your 
God." 

Joshua could now die in peace. He did 
die soon after, at the advanced age of 110 
years (b. c. 1582), and was buried in the 
borders of his own inheritance, in the side of 
the hill Gaash. Eleazar, the high-priest, did 
not long outlive him. He was buried in a 
hill of Mount Ephraim, and was succeeded 
by his son Phineas. Hills are mentioned as 
places of burial, because the sepulchres were 
usually excavations in the sides of hills. 
Even at the present day the cemeteries 
(though only for graves) of the East are 
commonly upon the slopes of hills, outside 
the towns to which they belong. 

The embalmed body of Joseph, which the 
Israelites had brought with them out of 
Egypt, had before this been deposited, 
according to his wish, in " the parcel of 
ground" at Shechern, which his father Jacob 
had given to him. That the lot gave to the 
tribe of Ephraim the territory which included 
this small patrimony, is a marked instance of 
the superintending power by which that mode 
of distribution was controlled and regulated. 



The character which Joshua sustained is 
in many respects as peculiar as that of 
Moses, although of a very different nature. 
J oshua was not the successor of Moses, nor 
had Joshua himself any successor. They 
were both appointed to discharge peculiar 
and special services by the King, Jehovah. 
Moses was his minister in the deliverance 
and in legislating for the Hebrews : Joshua 
was his general, specially appointed by him 
to conquer the promised land and portion it 
out among the people. Not Moses, nor 
Joshua, but God himself, was the ruler of 
the state, and they were merely his servants. 
How eminently Joshua was qualified by his 
decision of character, his valour and his 
faith, for the duties confided to him, and 
how well and worthily he discharged them, 
has appeared in the narrative. " He was," 
in the language of Jahn, "a man whose 
whole life was devoted to the establishment 
of the theocratic policy, and consequently to 
the establishment of the true religion — 
services which ought to endear his memory 
to all succeeding ages." 



CHAPTER II 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



From Joshua to Samuel (a period of about 
474 years) the condition of the Israelites 
varied according as the fundamental law of 
the state was observed or transgressed, 
exactly as Moses had predicted, and as the 
sanctions of the law had determined. 

The last admonitions of Joshua, and the 
solemn renewal of the covenant with Jehovah, 
failed to produce all the effect intended. 
That generation, indeed, never suffered 
idolatry to become predominant, but still 
they were very negligent with respect to the 
expulsion of the Canaanites. Only a few 
tribes made war upon them, and even they 
were soon weary of the contest. They spared 
their dangerous and corrupting neighbour?, 



and, contrary to express statute, were satis- 
fied with making them tributary. They 
even became connected with them by un- 
lawful marriages, and then it was no longer 
easy for them to exterminate or banish the 
near relatives of their own families. The 
Hebrews thus rendered the execution of so 
severe a law in a manner impossible, and 
wove for themselves the web in which they 
were afterwards entangled. Their Canaan- 
itish relatives invited them to their festivals, 
where not only lascivious songs were sung in 
honour of the gods, but fornication and 
unnatural lusts were indulged in as part of 
the Divine service. These debaucheries, then 
consecrated by the religious customs of all 



192 

nations, were gratifying to the sensual appe- 
tites ; and the subject of Jehovah too readily 
submitted himself to such deities, so highly 
honoured by his connections, and worshipped 
in all the neighbouring nations. At first, 
probably, a symbolical representation of 
Jehovah was set up, but this was soon trans- 
ferred to an idol, or was invoked as an idol 
by others. Idolatrous images were after- 
wards set up, together with the image of 
Jehovah, and the Israelites fondly imagined 
that they should be the more prosperous if 
they rendered homage to the ancient gods of 
the land. The propensity to idolatry, which 
was predominant in all the rest of the world, 
thus spread itself among the chosen people 
like a plague. From time to time idolatry 
was publicly professed, and this national 
treachery to their king, Jehovah, always 
brought with it national misfortunes. 

However, it does not appear that any form 
of idolatry was openly tolerated until that 
generation was extinct, which, under J oshua, 
had sworn anew to the covenant with Jeho- 
vah. After that the rulers were unable or 
unwilling any longer to prevent the public 
worship of pagan deities. But the Hebrews, 
rendered effeminate by this voluptuous reli- 
gion, and forsaken by their king, J ehovah, 
were no longer able to contend with their 
foes, and were forced to bend their necks 
under a foreign yoke. In this humiliating 
and painful subjection to a conquering 
people, they called to mind their deliverance 
from Egypt, the ancient kindnesses of 
Jehovah, the promises and threatenings of 
the law : then they forsook their idols, who 
could afford them no help, — they returned to 
the sacred tabernacle, and then found a 
deliverer who freed them from their bondage. 
The reformation was generally of no longer 
duration than the life of the deliverer. As 
soon as that generation was extinct, idolatry 
again crept in by the same way, and soon 
became predominant. Then followed sub- 
jection and oppression under the yoke of 
some neighbouring people, until a second 
reformation prepared them for a new deli- 
verance. Between these extremes of prospe- 
rity and adversity, the consequences of their 
fidelity or treachery to their Divine king, the 



[book III. 

Hebrew nation was continually fluctuating 
until the time of Samuel. Such were the 
arrangements of Providence, that as soon as 
idolatry gained the ascendancy, some one of 
the neighbouring nations grew powerful, 
acquired the preponderance, and subjected 
the Hebrews. Jehovah always permitted 
their oppressions to become sufficiently severe 
to arouse them from their slumbers, to 
remind them of the sanctions of the law, and 
to turn them again to their God and king. 
Then a hero arose, who inspired the people 
with courage, defeated their enemies, abo- 
lished idolatry, and re-established the 
authority of Jehovah. As the Hebrews, in 
the course of time, became more obstinate in 
their idolatry, so each subsequent oppression 
of the nation was always more severe than 
the preceding. So difficult was it, as man- 
kind were then situated, to preserve a know- 
ledge of the true God in the world, although 
so repeatedly and so expressly revealed, and 
in so high a degree made manifest to the 
senses*. 

After this general view of the whole period 
to which the remainder of the present book 
is devoted, we may proceed to the historical 
details from which that view is collected. 

Soon after the death of Joshua, and while 
the contemporary elders still lived, the 
Israelites made some vigorous and successful 
exertions to extend their territory. The 
most remarkable of these exertions was that 
made by the tribe of Judah, assisted by that 
of Simeon. They slew 10,000 Canaanites 
and Perizzites in the territory of Bezek, the 
king of which, Adoni-Bezek (literally, " my 
lord of Bezek"), contrived to make his 
escape ; but he was pursued and taken, when 
the conquerors cut off his thumbs and great 
toes. Now this, at the first view, was a 
barbarous act. It was not a mode in which 
the Hebrews were wont to treat their captives; 
and the reason for it — that it was intended 
as an act of just retaliation, or, as we should 
say, of poetic justice — appears from the 
bitter remark of Adoni-Bezek himself : — 
" Three score and ten kings, having their 
thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered 
their meat under my table : as I have done, 

* Jahn, b. iii. sect. 20. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. II ] 



FKOM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



193 



so God hath requited me." This proves that, 
as we have already on more than one occasion 
intimated, the war practices of the Israelites 
— especially in the treatment of their captives 
— was not more barbarous, and, in many 
respects, less barbarous, than those of their 
contemporaries ; and that even their polished 
neighbours, the Egyptians, were not in this 
respect above them. Adoni-bezek died soon 




[Captives bound.] 

after at Jerusalem, to which place he was 
taken by the conquerors. They at this time 
had possession of the lower part of that 
town, and soon after succeeded in taking the 
upper city, upon Mount Zion, which the 
Jebusites had hitherto retained. They sacked 
it and burned it with fire. But as we after- 
wards again find it in the occupation of the 
Jebusites, down to the time of David, it 
seems they took advantage of some one of 
the subsequent oppressions of Israel, to 
recover the site and rebuild the upper city. 

Eleazar the high-priest, as we have seen, 
did not long survive Joshua ; and the rem- 
nant of the seventy elders, originally appointed 
by Moses to assist him in the government of 
the nation, soon followed them to the tomb. 
"While these venerable persons lived, the 
Israelites remained faithful to their Divine 
King and to his laws. But soon after their 
death, the beginnings of corruption appeared, 
j A timely attempt was made to check its 
progress by the remonstrances and threaten- 
ings of a prophet from Gilgal. But although 
they quailed under the rebuke which was 
there administered, the effect was but tem- 
porary. The downward course which the 
nation had taken was speedily resumed ; and 




[Immolation of Captives.] 

it is strikingly illustrated by some circum- 
stances which the author of the Book of 
Judges has given in an appendix contained 
in the five last chapters of that book, but 
which we shall find it more convenient to 
introduce here in their proper chronological 
place. 

The history of Micah furnishes a very 




[Scribe counting Hands (cut off).] 

interesting example of the extent to which 
even Israelites, well disposed in the main, 
had become familiarised with superstitious 
and idolatrous practices, and the curious 
manner in which they managed to make a 
monstrous and most unseemly alliance be- 
tween the true doctrine in which they had 
been brought up and the erroneous notions 
which they had imbibed. 

A woman of Ephraim had, through a mis- 
taken zeal, dedicated a large quantity of 



194 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



silver (about 550 ounces) to the Lord, in- 
tending that her son should make therewith 
a teraph, in the hope that by this means she 
might procure to her house the blessings of 
one who had absolutely forbidden all worship 
by images. Her son Micah knew not of this 
sacred appropriation of the money, and took 
it for the use of the house. But on learning 
its destination, and hearing his mother lay 
her curse upon the sacrilegious person by 
whom she supposed it had been stolen, he 
became alarmed, and restored her the silver; 
and received it again from her with directions 
to give effect to her intention. This he did. 
He provided a teraph, and all things neces- 
sary to the performance of religious services 
before it, including vestments for a priest. 
He set apart one of his own sons as priest, 
until he should be able to procure a Levite 
to take that character. He had not long to 
wait. It would seem that the dues of the 
Levites were not properly paid at this time ; 
for a young Levite, who had lived at Bethle- 
hem, felt himself obliged to leave that place 
and seek elsewhere a subsistence. Happening 
to call at Micah's house, he gladly accepted 
that person's offer to remain and act as 
priest for the recompense of his victuals, 
with two suits of clothes (one probably 
sacerdotal), and eleven shekels of silver*. 
Micah was delighted at this completion of 
his establishment, and, with most marvellous 
infatuation, cried, " Now know I that Jehovah 
will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to 
my priest." Things went on tranquilly for 
a time. But it happened that the tribe of 
Dan could not get possession of more than 
the hilly part of its territory, as the Amorites 
retained the plain, which was the most rich 
and valuable part. They therefore sought 
elsewhere an equivalent territory which 
might be more easily acquired. Having 
ascertained that this might be found in the 
remote but wealthy and peaceable town and 
district of Laish, near the sources of the 
J ordan, a body of 600 men was sent to get 
possession of it. From the persons they had 
previously sent to explore the country, they 
had heard of Micah's establishment ; and so 
far from manifesting any surprise or indig- 
* Equal to about twenty-flve shillings. 



nation, they viewed the matter much in the 
same light as Micah did himself. They 
envied him his idol and his priest, and 
resolved to deprive him of both, and take 
them to their new settlement. They did so, 
notwithstanding the protests and outcries of 
the owner: and as for the Levite, he was 
easily persuaded to prefer the priesthood of 
a clan to that of a single family. His 
descendants continued long after to exercise 
the priestly office, in connection with this 
idol, at Dan — which was the name the con- 
querors gave to the town of Laish: and it is 
lamentable to have to add, that there is 
good reason to suspect that this Levite was 
no other than a grandson of Moses. 

It would seem that the tribe of Benjamin 
had much the start of the other tribes in 
the moral corruption, in the infamous vices, 
which resulted from the looseness of their 
religious notions, and from the contaminating 
example of the heathen, with whom they 
were surrounded and intermixed. 

A Levite of Mount Ephraim was on his 
way home with his wife, whom he was 
bringing back from her father's house in 
Bethlehem ; and, on the approach of night, 
he entered the town of Gibeah, in Benjamin, 
to tarry till the next morning. As the 
custom of the travellers was, he remained in 
the street till some one should invite them 
to his house. But in that wicked place, no 
hospitable notice was taken of them until an 
old man, himself from Mount Ephraim, but 
living there, invited them to his home. In 
the night that house was besieged by the 
men of the place, after the same fashion and 
for the same purpose, as that of Lot had 
been, when he entertained the angels in 
Sodom. The efforts of the aged host to turn 
them from their purpose were unavailing: 
and as a last resource, the Levite, in the 
hope of diverting them from their abominable 
purpose, put forth his wife into the street. 
She was grievously maltreated by these vile 
people, until the morning, when they left 
her. She then went and lay down at the 
door of the house in which her lord lay ; and 
when he afterwards opened it — she was dead. 
The Levite laid the corpse upon his beast, 
and hastened to his home. 



! CLIAP. II.] 

There was a rather mysterious custom, in 
calling an assembly, by sending to the dif- 
ferent bodies or persons which were to 
compose it a portion of a divided beast*; 
and it then became awfully imperative upon 
i the party which received the bloody missive, 
to obey the call which it intimated. To 
; give a horrible intensity to the custom in 
: this case, the Levite — a man of obviously 
peculiar character — divided his wife's body 
j into twelve parts, and sent one portion to 
each of the tribes of Israel. The horror- 
struck tribes, on receiving their portion of 
the body, and hearing the statement which 
the messengers delivered, agreed that such 
a thing had not before been heard of in 
Israel, and hastened to the place of meeting, 
which was Mizpeh. 

In the great audience there assembled, 
the Levite declared his wrongs ; which, when 
they had heard, the thousands of Israel 
vowed not to return to their homes until 
they had brought the offenders to condign 
punishment. And to express the earnestness 
I of their purpose, they appointed one-tenth 
| of their whole number to bring in provisions 
for the rest, that the want of victuals might 
; not, as often happens in oriental warfare, 
oblige them to disperse before their object 
j was accomplished. But, in the first instance, 
j they sent messengers throughout the tribe of 
! Benjamin, explaining the occasion of their 
j assembling, and demanding that the offenders 
I should be delivered up to justice. This the 
Benjamites were so far from granting that 
j the whole tribe made common cause with 
the people of Gibeah, and all its force was 
called out to repel any attempt which the 
other tribes might make against them. 
Considering that the force of the eleven 
tribes amounted to 400,000 able men, whereas 
the Benjamites could bring together no more 
than 26,000, the hardihood of this resistance 
is well worthy of remark, if it does not make 
out the claim of the Benjamites to that 
character for indomitable courage which 
they appear to have acquired. Probably the 
influence of that acknowledged character 
upon their opponents, together with their 

* See 1 Sara. xi. 7. 



195 

own peculiar skill in the use of the sling, 
formed their main reliance. Among them 
there were 700 left-handed men who could 
sling stones to a hair's breadth and not miss. 

The Israelites committed one fatal over- 
sight in this undertaking. Although the 
affair was of such grave importance, they 
neglected to consult their Divine King, with- 
out whose permission they ought not to have i 
supposed themselves authorised to act as 
they did. They first decided on war, and 
then only consulted him as to the manner 
in which it should be conducted. The con- 
sequence was, that they were twice defeated 
by the Benjamites, who sallied from the 
town of Gibeah against them. Corrected by 
this experience, they applied in a proper j 
manner to learn the will of their King ; and j 
then the victory was promised to them. 

In their next attempt, the Israelites 
resorted to the same familiar stratagem of 
ambuscade and of pretended flight, when the I 
besieged sallied forth against them, as that j 
whereby the town of Ai had been taken by j 
Joshua, and with precisely the same result. 
Eighteen thousand Benjamites, " men of 
valour," were trodden " down with ease " by 
the vast host which now enclosed them. The 
rest endeavoured to escape to the wilderness, 
but were all overtaken and destroyed, with 
the exception of 600 who found shelter 
among the rocks of Rimmon. The con- 
querors then went through the land, sub- 
jecting it to military execution. They set 
on fire all the towns to which they came, 
and put to the sword the men, the cattle, 
and all that came to hand. 

But when the heat of the conflict and 
execution had subsided, the national and 
clannish feelings of the Israelites were 
shocked at the reflection that they had 
extinguished a tribe in Israel. It was true 
that 600 men remained alive among the 
rocks of Rimmon ; but it was not clear how 
the race of Benjamin could be continued 
through them, as, at the very commencement 
of the undertaking, the Israelites had solemnly 
sworn that they would not give their daugh- 
ters in marriage to the Benjamites. They 
had now leisure to repent of this vow; 
although, with reference to the. vile propen- J 

o 2 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



196 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book rii. 



sities exhibited by the people of Gibeah, it 
was quite natural that in the first excitement 
such a vow should have been taken. 

But now they were sincerely anxious to 
find means of repairing their error, and to 
provide the survivors with wives, that the 
house of Benjamin might not be wholly lost. 
It was found that the summons whereby 
the tribes had been assembled, had been 
unheeded by the men of Jabesh-Gilead, 
whereby they had exposed themselves to 
the terrible doom which the very act of 
summons denounced against the disobedient. 
That doom was inflicted, save that all the 
virgins were spared to be wives for the 
Benjamites. But as these were still in- 
sufficient, the unprovided Benjamites were 
secretly advised to lie in wait in the vine- 
yards near Shiloh, when they attended the 
next annual festival at the tabernacle; and 
when the young women of the place came 
out in dances, as at such times they were 
wont, they might seize and carry off the 
number they required. The men followed 
this advice. And when the fathers and 
brothers of the stolen maidens began to 
raise an outcry, the elders, by at horn the 
measure had been counselled, interposed to 
pacify them, and persuaded them to over- 
look the matter, in consideration of the dif- 
ficulties by which the case was surrounded. 

The Benjamites then returned to their 
desolated cities, and rebuilt and re-occupied 
them as they were able. But from this time 
Benjamin was the least, although not the 
least distinguished, of all the tribes. 

At length (b.c. 1572) the idolatries and 
demoralization of the Israelites had become 
so rank, that a fiery trial was judged ne- 
cessary for their correction. A king named 
Cushanrishthaim, reigning in Mesopotamia, 
had extended his power far on this side the 
Euphrates. He now advanced into Canaan, 
and, either by victory or menace, rendered the 
Hebrews tributary. They remained under 
severe bondage for eight years. At the end 
of that time, Othniel — that relative of Caleb 
who has already been mentioned — was in- 
cited to put himself at the head of the 
people and attempt their deliverance. The 
garrisons which the Mesopotamians had left 



in the country, were suddenly surprised and 
slain ; the armies of Israel again appeared in 
the field, and, although at first few in num- 
ber, they fought at every point the troops 
opposed to them : and when their numbers 
were increased by the reinforcements which 
poured in from all quarters on the first news 
of probable success, they hazarded a general 
action, in which they obtained a complete 
victory over the Mesopotamians, and drove 
them beyond the Euphrates*. 

Othniel remained the acknowledged judge, 
or regent, of the divine king for forty years. 
During his administration, the people re- 
mained faithful to their God and King, and 
consequently prospered. But when the be- 
neficial control which Othniel exercised was 
withdrawn by his death, they fell again into 
idolatry and crime, and new afflictions became 
needful to them. 

The instruments of their punishment, this i 
time, were the Moabites. By a long peace 
this nation had recovered from the defeats 
which they had suffered from the Amorites 
before the time of Moses : and, perceiving 
that the Israelites were not invincible, Eglon, 
the king of Moab, formed a confederacy with 
the Ammonites and Amalekites, and, with 
this help, made an attack upon them — pro- 
bably under the same pretences which we 
shall find to have been employed on a subse- 
quent occasion. He defeated the idolatrous 
Hebrews in battle, subdued the tribes beyond 
Jordan, and the southern tribes on this side 
the river, and established himself in Jericho, 
which he must have found a convenient 
post for intercepting, or at least checking, 
the communications between the eastern and 
western tribes. At that place the conquered 
tribes were obliged to bring him presents, or, - 
in other words, to pay a periodical tribute. 
This subjection to a king who resided among 
them was still more oppressive than that from 
which they had been delivered by Othniel; 
and it continued more than twice as long — 
that is, for eighteen years. This oppression 
must have been particularly heavy upon the 
tribe of Benjamin, as it was their territory 

* This paragraph is partly from Josephus, whose ac- 
count is here in agreement with, while it fills up, the brief 
notice which the Book of Judges offers. 



CHAP. II.] 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



197 



to which Jericho belonged, and which was 
therefore encumbered by the presence of the 
court of the conqueror. It was natural that 
those whose necks were the most galled by 
the yoke, should make the first effort to 
shake it off. Accordingly the next deliverer 
was of the tribe of Benjamin. His name 
was Ehud, one of those left-handed men — 
or rather, perhaps, men who could use the 
left hand with as much ease and power as 
the right — for which this tribe seems to have 
been remarkable. He conducted a deputa- 
tion which bore from the Israelites the cus- 
tomary tributes to the king. It seemed that 
men with weapons were not admitted to the 




[Daggers *.] 

king's presence: but Ehud had a two-edged 
dagger under his garment; but as he wore 
it on the right side, where it is worn by 
no right-handed man, its presence was not 
suspected. When he had left the presence, 
and dismissed his people, Ehud went on as 
far as the carved images f, which had been 
placed at Gilgal. The sight of these images, 



* These specimens are ancient Egyptian daggers, and 
are precisely of the same form as those now generally used 
in Western Asia, They are always two-edged, like Ehud's 
dagger, and of about the same length, a foot and half. 
The group represents the same weapon ; the first (from the 
right) shows the unsheathed dagger, the second represents 
it in its sheath, and that outside represents the back of the 
sheath. A very common way of using it is to stoop and 
endeavour to thrust it into the belly of the opponent. 

t Not " quarries " as in our version. There are and can 
be no quarries in a plain like that which formed the site of 
Gilgal, near Jericho. 



which the Moabites had probably set up by 
the sacred monument of stones which the 
Israelites had there set up, seems to have 
revived the perhaps faltering zeal of the 
Benjamite, and he returned to Jericho, and 
to the presence of the king, and intimated 
that he had a secret message to deliver. 
The king then withdrew with him to his 
" summer parlour," which seems to have been 
such a detached or otherwise pleasantly-si- 
tuated apartment, as are still usually found 
in the mansions and gardens of the East, 
and to which the master retires to enjoy a 
freer air, and more open prospects than any 
other part of his dwelling commands, and 
where also he usually withdraws to enjoy 
his siesta during the heat of the day. It is 
strictly a private apartment, which no one 
enters without being specially invited; and 
accordingly it is said of this, that it was an 
apartment "which he had for himself alone." 
As the king sat in this parlour, Ehud ap- 
proached him, saying, " I have a message 
from God unto thee." On hearing that sa- 
cred name, the king rose from his seat, and 
Ehud availed himself of the opportunity 
of burying his dagger in his bowels. The 
Benjamite then withdrew quietly, bolting- 
after him the door of the summer parlour; 
and as such parlours usually communicate 
by a private stair with the porch, without 
the necessity of passing into or through the 
interior parts of the mansion, there was 
nothing to impede his egress, unless the 
porters at the outer gate had seen cause 
for suspicion. 

The Scripture, as is frequently the case, 
mentions this as a historical fact, without 
commendatory or reprehensive remark ; and 
we have no right to infer the approbation 
which is not expressed. No doubt Ehud's 
deed was a murder ; and the only excuse for 
it is to be found in its public object, and in 
the fact that the notions of the East have 
always been, and are now, far more lax 
on this point than those which Christian 
civilization has produced in Europe. There 
all means of getting rid of a public enemy, 
whom the arm of the law cannot reach, are 
considered just and proper. No one can 
read a few pages of any Oriental history 



198 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK II 



without being fully aware of this : and it is 
by Oriental notions rather than by our own 
that the act of Ehud must, to a certain ex- 
tent, be judged. 

The servants of Eglon supposed that their 
lord was taking his afternoon sleep in his 
summer parlour, and hence a considerable 
time elapsed before his assassination was 
discovered. 

In the mean time Ehud was able to make 
known the death of the king, and to collect 
a body of men, with whom he went down 
to seize the fords of the Jordan, that the 
Moabites in Canaan might neither receive 
reinforcements from their own country nor 
escape to it. Confounded by the death of 
their king, they were easily overcome. All 
who were on this /side the Jordan — ten 
thousand in number — were destroyed ; not 
one escaped. This deliverance secured for 
Israel a repose of eighty years, terminating 
in the year B.C. 1426, being 182 years after 
the passage of the Jordan. 

At or towards the end of this period of 
eighty years, a first attempt was made by 
the Philistines to bring the southern tribes 
under their yoke. But they were unable 
to accomplish their design, having been re- 
pulsed on their first advance, with the loss 
of six hundred men, by Shamgar and other 
husbandmen, who fought with ox-goads, 
being then employed in the cultivation of 
the fields. 

From the manner in which Shamgar is 
mentioned in the regular narrative, it does 
not appear whether he took any part in the 
administration of affairs : but from the notice 
which is taken of " the days of Shamgar " 
in the song of Deborah, it is probable that 
he did. Dr. Hales thinks the term of his 
administration was included in the eighty 
years, and that his government in the west 
was contemporary, in part, with that of 
Ehud in the east. But in the absence of 
other positive information, it may be safe to 
prefer the statement of Josephus, who says 
that Shamgar succeeded Ehud, but died in 
the first year of his administration. 

It is about this time that the story of 
Ruth, which occupies a separate book in the 



Hebrew Scriptures, is placed by Usher and 
other chronologers. Being episodical, and 
only slightly connected with the historical 
narrative, we cannot follow the details of 
this beautiful story ; but the intimations of 
the state of society, and of the manners and 
ideas of the times, which it contains, are, 
even historically, of too much importance to 
be overlooked. 

The scene of the principal part of the 
story is in Bethlehem of Judah, which has 
been several times mentioned in the course 
of this chapter. 

A famine in the land drives an inhabitant 
of this town, with his wife and two sons, to 
the land of Moab, which, in consequence of 
the victories under Ehud, seems to have been 
at this time in some sort of subjection to the 
Israelites. The man's name was Elimelech, 
his wife's Naomi, and the sons were called 
Mahlon and Chilion. The woman lost her 
husband and two sons in the land of Moab, 
but the childless wives of her sons, who had 
married in that land, remained with her. 
One was called Orpah, and the other Ruth. 
At the end of ten years, Naomi determined 
to return home, but, with beautiful disin- 
terestedness, exhorted the widows of her two 
sons to remain in their own land with their 
well-provided friends, and not go to be par- 
takers of her destitution. Orpah accordingly 
remained: but nothing could overcome the 
devoted attachment of Ruth to the mother of 
her lost husband. To the really touching re- 
presentations of Naomi, her still more touch- 
ing reply was, "Intreat me not to leave thee, 
or to return from following after thee : for 
whither thou goest, I will go ; and where 
thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall 
be my people, and thy God my God : where 
thou diest, will I die, and there will I be 
buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, 
if aught but death part thee and me." This 
strong and unmistakeable expression of most 
beautiful and true affections, could not be 
repelled by Naomi. They took their home- 
ward way together. 

It was barley harvest when Naomi and 
Ruth arrived at Bethlehem. Ruth, anxious 
to provide in any little way for their joint 
subsistence, soon bethought herself of going 



CHAP. II.] 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



199 



forth to seek permission to glean in some 
harvest field. It happened that the field 
where she asked and obtained this permis- 
sion, from the overseer of the reapers, be- 
longed to Boaz, a person of large posses- 
sions in these parts. Boaz himself came in 
the course of the day, to view the progress 
of the harvest. He greeted his reapers, 
"Jehovah be with you;" and they answered 
him, " Jehovah bless thee." His attention 
was attracted towards Ruth, and he inquired 
concerning her of his overseer, who told him 
that this was "The Moabitish damsel that 
came back with Naomi out of the country of 
Moab," and related how she had applied for 
leave to glean after the reapers. Boaz then 
himself accosted her, and kindly charged her 
not to go elsewhere, but to remain in his 
fields, and keep company with his maidens 
till the harvest was over. He had enjoined 
his young men not to molest her. If she 
were athirst she might go and drink freely 
from the vessels of water provided for the use 
of the reapers. Ruth was astonished at all 
this kindness, and fell at his feet, expressing 
her thanks and her surprise that he should 



take such kind notice of a stranger. But he 
said, " It hath fully been shewed me, all that 
thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since 
the death of thine husband : and how thou 
hast left thy father and thy mother, and the 
land of thy nativity, and art come unto a 
people which thou knowest not heretofore. 
Jehovah recompense thy work : and a full 
reward be given to thee from J ehovah, the 
God of Israel, under whose wings thou art 
come to trust." She answered, "Let me 
find favour in thy sight, my lord ; for that 
thou hast comforted me, and for that thou 
hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, 
though I be not like unto one of thine hand- 
maidens." 

When the meal-time of the harvest people 
came round, Boaz invited her to draw near 
and eat of the bread, and dip her morsel in 
the vinegar with them. He also handed her 
some new corn parched, which was considered 
rather a luxury, and therefore Ruth reserved 
part of it for Naomi. 

All these little incidents, beautifully de- 
scriptive of the innocent old customs of 
harvest time, bring strongly before the mind 




[Harvest.] 



of one who has studied the antiquities of 
Egypt, the agricultural scenes depicted in 
the grottos of Eleithuias, in which so many 
of the usages of Egyptian agriculture are 
represented. There we see the different pro- 
cesses of cutting with the reaping hook, and 
of plucking up the stalks ; gleaners ; water re- 
frigerating in porous jars (placed on stands) 
for the refreshment of the reapers ; the reapers 
quenching their thirst ; and women bearing 



away the vessels in which drink has been 
brought to them at their labour. 

When Ruth returned home in the evening 
with the result of her day's gleaning— an 
ephah of barley — Naomi was anxious to know 
how it happened that her labours had been 
so prosperous : and when she heard the name 
of Boaz, she remarked that he was a near 
kinsman of the family ; and advised that, ac- 
cording to his wish, Ruth should confine her 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. [BOOK III. 



200 

gleaning to his fields. So Ruth gleaned in 
the fields of Boaz, until the end not only of 
the barley, but of the wheat harvest. 

When the harvest was over, Naomi, who 
was anxious for the rest and welfare of the 
good and devoted creature who had been 
more than a daughter to her, acquainted her 
with what had lately engaged her thoughts. 
She said that Boaz was so near of kin that 
he came under the operation of the levirate 
law, which required that when a man died 
childless, his next of kin should marry the 
widow, in order that the first child born from 
this union should be counted as the son of 
the deceased, and inherit as his heir. It was, 
therefore, no less her duty than a circum- 
stance highly calculated to promote her wel- 
fare, that Boaz should be reminded of the 
obligation which devolved upon him. But 
as it was not wished to press the matter 
upon him, if he were averse to it, it was 
necessary that the claim should, in the first 
instance, be privately made. In such a case, 
Ruth, a stranger very imperfectly acquainted 
with the laws and habits of the Israelites, 
could only submit herself to Naomi's guidance. 
She told Ruth that Boaz was engaged in 
winnowing his barley in the threshing floor ; 
which, of course, was nothing more than a 
properly levelled place in the open air. 
Naomi conjectured he would rest there at 
night, and told Ruth to mark the spot to 
which he withdrew, and advance to claim 




[Winnowing Corn in the Threshing Floor.] 




[Threshing Corn by the Treading of Oxen ] 



the protection he was bound to render. All 
happened as Naomi had foreseen. Boaz, 
after he had supped, withdrew to sleep at 
the end of the heap of corn ; and after he 
had lain down, Ruth advanced and placed 
herself at his feet : and when he awoke at 
midnight, and with much astonishment, 
asked who she was, she answered, " I am 
Ruth, thine handmaid : spread therefore thy 
skirt over thine handmaid ; for thou art a 
near kinsman." Those who, measuring all 
things by their own small and current 
standards, regard as improper or indelicate 
this procedure of one 

' Who feared no evil, for she knew no sin/ 

need only hear the answer of Boaz to be 
satisfied. " Blessed be thou, of Jehovah, 
my daughter .... And now, my daughter, 
fear not : .... for all the city of my people 
doth know that thou art a virtuous woman." 
He added, however, that there was a person 
in the town more nearly related to her de- 
ceased husband ; and on him properly the 
levirate duty devolved : but if he declined 
it, then it fell to himself, and he would cer- 
tainly undertake it. It being too late for 
Ruth to return home, Boaz desired her to 
remain in the threshing-floor for the night. 
Early in the morning he dismissed her, after 
having filled her veil with corn to take to 
Naomi. 

In those times, and long after, it was 
customary to transact all business of a public 
nature and to administer justice in the 
gates. When there was little se of written 



CHAP. II.] 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEOX. 



201 



' documents, this gave to every transaction 
the binding obligation which the presence of 
many witnesses involved ; and thus also 

' justice was easily and speedily administered 
among the people, at the hours when they 
passed to and fro between the fields and the 
city. And such hours were, for this reason, 
those at which the judges and elders gave 
their attendance in the gates. 

Boaz therefore went up to the gate ; and 
requested ten of the elders, there present, to 
sit down with him as witnesses of what was 
to take place. When the "near kinsman" 

j passed by, he called him to sit down with 
them. He then questioned him as to his 
willingness "to raise up the name of the 
dead upon his inheritance." This he was 
not willing to do, lest he should " mar his 
own inheritance;" and therefore he was glad 
to relinquish his prior claim to Boaz, which 
he did by the significant action of drawing 
off his own shoe and giving it to him. This 
action was usual in all transactions of this 
nature, and it may well be interpreted by 
the familiar idiom which would express Boaz 
as being made, by this act and with refer- 
ence to this particular question, to stand in the 
shoes of the person who had transferred to 
him his rights and duties. Boaz then declared 
all the people there present at the gate to 
be witnesses of this transfer, and they re- 
sponded, "We are witnesses." After this 
Boaz took Ruth to be his wife; and the 
fruit of this union was Obed, the grandfather 
of David. 

From the repose which this narrative 
offers, one turns reluctantly to renewed 
scenes of war, oppression, and wrong. 

It may be doubted that the authority — 
such as it was — of any of the judges ex- 
tended over all the tribes. Hardly any of 
the oppressions to which the Israelites were 
subject appear to have been general, and in 
most cases the authority of the judge appears 
to have been confined to the tribes he had 
been instrumental in delivering from their 
oppressors. There is, for instance, not the 
least reason to suppose that the authority of 
Ehud extended over the northern tribes, 
which had not been affected by the op- 
pression of the Moabites, from which he 



delivered the south and east. The eighty 
years of good conduct which followed this 
deliverance, is therefore only to be under- 
stood as exhibited by the tribes which were 
then delivered. The northern tribes, and in 
some degree those of the centre and the 
west, were meanwhile falling into those evil 
practices, from which it was necessary that 
distress and sorrow should bring them back. 
And therefore they were distressed. 

The northern Canaanites had, in the course 
of time, recovered from the effects of that 
great overthrow which they sustained in the 
time of Joshua. A new J abin, reigning like 
his predecessor in Hazor, by the lake Merom, 
rose into great power. His general, Sisera, 
was an able and successful warrior; and his 
powerful military force contained not fewer 
than 900 of those iron-armed chariots of war 
which the Israelites regarded with so much 
dread. With such a force he was enabled, 
for the punishment of their sins, to reduce 
the northern tribes to subjection, and hold 
them tributary. Considering the character 
of the power which now prevailed over them, 
there is reason to conclude that this was the 
severest of all the oppressions to which 
Israel had hitherto been subject. The song 
of Deborah conveys some intimations of their 
miserable condition. The villages and open 
homesteads, which were continually liable to 
be pillaged, and the inhabitants insulted and 
wronged by the Canaanites, were deserted 
throughout the land, and the people found 
it necessary to congregate in the walled towns. 
Travelling was unsafe ; in consequence of 
which the highways were deserted, and those 
who were obliged to go from one place to 
another found it necessary to journey in bye- 
roads and unfrequented paths. At the places 
to which it was necessary to resort for water, 
they were waylaid and robbed, wounded, or 
slain : and, to crown all, they were disarmed ; 
among 40,000 in Israel, a shield or spear was 
not to be found. The details of this picture 
are exactly such as are offered by the con- 
dition of any oppressed or subjugated popu- 
lation, at this day, in the East. The 
government itself may be content with its 
tribute; but it will be obliged to wink at 
because unable to prevent, the far greater 



21)2 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book in. 



grievances, the exactions, robberies, insults, 
woundings, deaths, to which the people are 
subjected by the inferior officers of govern- 
ment, by bands of licentious soldiers, and by 
an adverse and triumphant populace, — all of 
whom look upon them as their prey and 
spoil, as things made only to be trampled 
on. Such oppression the Israelites endured 
for twenty years. They then remembered 
that, to them, trouble was the punishment 
of sin; and that there was One able and 
willing to. deliver them, if they would but 
turn themselves unto Him. They did turn, 
and their deliverance was certain from that 
hour. 

In those days a pious and able woman, 
well acquainted with the divine law, became 
an important person in Israel. Her name 
was Deborah, and she abode under a palm- 
tree in the southern part of Ephraim. Her 
high character for piety and wisdom occa- 
sioned the Israelites to resort to her for 
counsel and for justice; and it is not un- 
likely that her salutary influence contributed 
to move the people to that repentance which 
prepared the way for their deliverance. When 
their punishment had thus wrought its in- 
tended object, the Divine King made known 
to the prophetess his intention to deliver the 
house of Israel from its bondage ; but seeing 
that she, as a woman, could not personally 
lead the Israelites to battle, she sent to a 
person of the tribe of Naphtali, named Barak, 
and communicated to him the instructions 
she had received. These were, that he should 
bring together, at Mount Tabor, 10,000 men 
of the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun, and 
with them give battle to the forces of King 
Jabin. Barak, being fully aware of the 
difficulty of assembling and arming a re- 
spectable force, and recollecting the great- 
ness of that power he was to oppose, rather 
shrunk from the enterprise. He, however, 
offered to undertake it, if Deborah would 
afford him the benefit of her influential 
presence, but not else. She consented ; but, 
to rebuke the weakness of his faith, she 
prophesied that Sisera — the redoubted cap- 
tain of King Jabin's host — should not be 
slain in fight with him, or be taken captive 
by him, but should fall by a woman's hand. 



They went into the north together, and 
the required number of men from Naphtali 
and Zebulun readily obeyed their call, and 
marched to Mount Tabor. These two tribes 
had probably been selected on the ground 
that they were likely to engage more readily 
in this service, in consequence of their vi- 
cinity to the metropolitan seat of the 
oppressive power having rendered the yoke 
of servitude more galling and irritating to 
them than to the other tribes. 

As soon as Jabin's general, Sisera, heard 
of the Hebrew force assembled on Mount 
Tabor, he brought forth his 900 chariots, 
and assembled his whole army, not doubting 
to surround and cut in pieces a body of men 
so comparatively small. The Hebrews were, 
in general, much afraid of war-chariot3, to 
drawn battles in open plains they were un- 
accustomed, and the disparity of numbers 
was in this instance very great. Yet, en- 
couraged by the assurances of victory which 
Deborah conveyed, Barak did not await the 
assault of Sisera, but marched his men down 
from the mountain into the open plain, and 
fell impetuously upon the adverse host. In 
Oriental warfare the result of the first 
shock usually decides the battle, and the 
army is lost which then gives way, or has its 
ranks broken. So it was now. At the first 
shock, the vast army of Sisera was 6eized 
with a panic terror. The soldiers threw 
away their arms, and sought only how they 
might escape ; while the chariots drawn by 
terrified horses, impeded the retreat of the 
fugitives, and added to the confusion and 
the loss. The carnage among the Canaanites 
was horrible ; and, besides those who perished 
by the sword, vast numbers of them were 
swept away by the sudden overflow of the 
river Kishon. Sisera himself fled in his 
chariot across the plain of Esdraelon; but, 
fearing that his chariot rendered him too 
conspicuous, he dismounted and continued 
his flight on foot. At last he came to a 
nomade encampment, belonging to Heber 
the Kenite, one of the descendants of those 
of the family and clan of Jethro, who, with 
the brother-in-law of Moses, entered the 
land of Canaan with the Israelites, and 
enjoyed the privilege of pasturing their 



chap. ii.J 



fho:.i JOSHUA 



TO GIDEON. 



203 



flocks in its plains. Heber was from home, 
but his wife knew the illustrious fugitive, 
and offered him the protection of her tent. 
This, as the Kenites had been neutral in the 
war, Sisera did not hesitate to accept. He 
knew that the tent of a Bedouin, and 
especially the woman's portion of it, was a 
sanctuary, which the owner would sooner 
perish than allow to be violated, and that 
infamy worse than death awaited him who 
allowed injury to befall the guest or fugitive 
who was admitted to its shelter. Being 
athirst, Sisera asked for water ; but instead 
of this, she gave him sour milk— the best 
beverage an Arab tent contains, and the 
refreshing qualities of which are well known 
to those who have travelled in the East. 
This, with his fatigue, disposed Sisera to 
sleep. As he slept, the thought occurred to 
Jael (that was the woman's name) that the 
greatest enemy of the now victorious Is- 
raelites lay helpless before her ; and that it 
was in her power to win great favour from 
the victors, by anticipating the almost 
certain death which awaited the chief 
captain of Jabin s host. Having no weapon, 
she took a mallet and one of the long nails 
by which the tent cords are fastened to the 
ground, and stealing softly to the place 
where he lay, she smote the nail into his 
temple, pinning his head to the ground. 
Barak, passing that way soon after, in pursuit, 
was called in by Jael, and he beheld the 
redoubted Sisera dead at his feet— slain 
ignominiously by a woman's hand. He might 
then have pondered whether, had Sisera 
been the victor and himself the fugitive, the 
same fate might not have been his own. 
When we reliect that "there was peace 
between Jabin the king of Hazor and the 
house of Heber the Kenite," and that it was 
in the knowledge that he deserved no wrong 
at their hands, that Sisera accepted the 
shelter which Jael offered ; and when, more- 
over, we consider that the emir, Jael's 
husband, had no interest in the result, save 
that of standing well with the victorious 
party, it will be difficult to find any other 
motive than that which we have assigned — 
the desire to win the favour of the victors — 
for an act so grossly opposed to all those 



notions of honour among tent-dwellers on 
w r hich Sisera had relied for his safety. It was 
a most treacherous and cruel murder, wanting 
all those extenuations which were applicable 
to the assassination of king Eglon by Ehud. 

The time is gone by when commentators 
or historians might venture to justify this 
deed. Our extended acquaintance with the 
East enables us to know that those Orientals 
whose principles would allow them to ap- 
plaud the act of Ehud, would regard with 
horror the murder, in his sleep, of a confiding 
and friendly guest, to whom the sacred 
shelter of the tent had been offered. That 
Deborah, as a prophetess, was enabled to 
foretel the fall of Sisera by a woman's hand, 
does not convey the Divine sanction of this 
deed, but only manifests the Divine fore- 
knowledge ; and that the same Deborah, in 
her triumphant song, blesses Jael for this 
act, only indicates the feeling, in the first 
excitement of victory, of one who had far 
more cause to rejoice at the death of Sisera 
than Jael had to inflict it. 

The triumphant song of Deborah has 
attracted great and deserved attention as a 
noble "specimen of the perfectly sublime 
ode." The design of this ode seems to be 
two-fold, religious and political: first, to 
thank God for the recent deliverance of 
Israel from Canaanitish bondage and op- 
pression; and, next, to celebrate the zeal 
and alacrity with which some of the tribes 
volunteered their services against the 
common enemy ; and to censure the luke- 
warmness and apathy of others who stayed 
at home, and thus betrayed the public 
cause ; and by this contrast and exposure, to 
heal those fatal divisions among the tribes 
which were so injurious to the public weal. 
It consists of three parts :— 1st, the exordium, 
containing an appeal to past times, where 
Israel was under the special protection of 
Jehovah, as compared with their late disas- 
trous condition; next, a recital of the cir- 
cumstances which preceded and those that 
accompanied the victory; lastly, a fuller 
description of the concluding event, the 
death of Sisera, and the disappointed hopes 
of his mother for his triumphant return. 
The admired conclusion is thus : — 



204 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



The mother of Sisera gazed through the 
window, 

Through the lattice she, lamenting, cried, 
' Why is his chariot so long in coming*? 
Wherefore linger the steps of his steeds v 
Her wise ladies answered their mistress, 
Yea, she returned answer to herself, — 
'Have they not sped, and are dividing the 
spoil? 

To every chief man a damsel or two? 
To Sisera a spoil of various colours, 
A spoil of various-coloured embroidery, 
A spoil of various-coloured embroideries for 
the neck.' — 
So let thine enemies perish, Jehovah ! 
But let they who love thee become 
As the sun going forth in his strength." 

From the animadversions which this ode 
contains, it is easy to collect that only those 
tribes which were actually subject to the 
oppression, and even only those on which 
the oppression the most heavily fell, were 
willing to disturb themselves by engaging in 
warlike operations against the oppressor. It 
does not appear that the southern tribes 
and the tribes beyond Jordan were directly 
affected by the subjugation of the northern 
tribes ; and even of those under tribute, the 
tribes more remote from the seat of king 
Jabin seem to have been more at ease than 
the others. All these were loth to come 
forward on this occasion; and, in general, 
we find that, among the Hebrews of this 
early period, there was little, if any, of that 
high-spirited and honourable abhorrence of 
a foreign yoke, which is, under God, the 
surest safeguard of a nation's independence. 
It was not the yoke itself they hated, but its 
physical weight upon their shoulders ; and 
that weight must be very heavy before they 
could be roused to any great effort to shake 
it from them. The iron which entered their 
souls in Egypt still rusted there. 

These sectional divisions— or rather this 
want of a general and sympathising union 
among the several members of the house of 
Israel— was the obvious secondary cause of 
the miseries and oppressions under which 
different portions of that great body did 
from time to time fall ; and this disunion 

* The original is highly figurative; Why is Ms chariot 
ashamed to come? 



itself was the natural and inevitable result 
of the neglect of the law, as a whole, and 
especially of those provisions which were, in 
their proper operation, admirably calculated 
to keep the tribes united together as one 
nation. It would be ridiculous to say that 
the theocratic policy was a failure. That 
which was not fairly and fully tried cannot 
be said to fail. Ruin to the people did not 
come from the system itself: and that ruin 
did come from the neglect of its conditions, 
rather shows how well that system was cal- 
culated to form a happy and united people. 

The victory of Deborah and Barak over 
Sisera gave to Israel a long repose from the 
aggressions of the nations west of the Jordan ; 
for although their peace began again to be 
disturbed after forty years (in 1338 B.C.), the 
invasion was then from the east. 

At the latter end of the forty years which 
followed the victory over Sisera, the Israelites 
had again relapsed into their evil and idola- 
trous habits. This was particularly the case 
of the tribes beyond Jordan, whose repose 
had been of longer duration than that of the 
western tribes, for it does not appear that 
the oppressions of king Jabin had extended 
to them. 

Their punishment was this time particu- 
larly heavy, and came from an unexpected 
quarter. The pastoral tribes dwelling on the 
borders of the land, and in the eastern deserts 
— the Midianites, Amalekites, with other 
tribes of Arabia — came swarming into the 
land "like locusts," with countless flocks 
and herds, and pitching their tents in the 
plains and valleys. Arriving by the time 
the products of the soil began to be gathered 
in, they remained until the final ingatherings 
of the year, when the advance of winter 
warned them to withdraw into their deserts. 
Thus their cattle grew fat upon the rich 
pastures of the land, while those of Israel 
were starved ; and the men themselves lived 
merrily upon the grain which the Hebrews 
had sowed, and upon the fruits which they 
had cultivated: and as, besides this depri- 
vation of the sustenance for which they 
had laboured, such lawless crews are always 
ready for any kind of great or small robbery 
and exaction, the Israelites were obliged to 



CHAP. II.] 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



205 



abandon the open country, and to resort to 
the walled towns, to entrench themselves in 
strongholds, and even to seek the shelter of 
the caves among the mountains. Even those 
who ventured to remain in occupation of 
their own allotments, were afraid to have it 
known that they had in their possession any 
of the produce of their own fields. All this 
while it does not appear that there was any 
open war, or any military operations. The 
invaders bore all before them, and had en- 
tirely their own way, by the mere force of the 
intimidating impressions which their numbers 
created. Countries or districts bordering on 
the desert are still subject to similar visita- 
tions, where the local government is not 
st ong enough to prevent them, or where the 
pre-occupation of the border soil by Arabs in 
the state of semi-cultivators, does not form 
an obstacle (as it does not so always) to the 
incursions of pure Bedouins. Down to a 
very recent date the very country east of the 
Jordan, which suffered the most on the 
present occasion, suffered much from the 
periodical sojourn and severe exactions of the 
Bedouin tribes. 

These incursions of the Midianites were 
repeated for seven years. By this time the 
oppression had become so heavy that the 
Israelites, finding by bitter experience the 
insufficiency of all other help, cried to Him 
who had delivered them of old: their cry 
was heard. A prophet was commissioned to 
point out to them that their disobedience 
had been the cause of their sufferings, and to 
give to them the promise of a new deliver- 
I ance. 

The hero this time appointed to act for 
the deliverance of Israel, was Gideon of 
Manasseh. His family was exposed to the 
general suffering occasioned by the presence 
of the Bedouin tribes, — so much so, that 
having retained possession of some corn, they 
dared not thresh it out for the use in the 
ordinary threshing-floor, but, to conceal it 
from the knowledge or suspicion of the 
invaders, were obliged to perform this 
operation silently and secretly, in so unusual 
a place as the vineyard, near the wine-press. 
The threshing-floors were watched by the 
Midianites at this time, when the harvests 



had been gathered in; but no regard was 
paid to the vineyards, as the season of ripe 
grapes was far off. Gideon was engaged in 
this service when " the angel of Je- 
hovah" appeared to him standing under 
an oak which grew there. When apprised 
of his vocation to deliver Israel, the modest 
husbandman would have excused himself on 
the ground of his wanting that eminence of 
station which so important a service appeared 
to demand ; and when silenced by the em- 
phatic "I will be with thee" from his 
heavenly visitant, he still sought to have 
some certain tokens whereby he might feel 
assured, and be enabled to convey the assur- 
ance to others, that his call was indeed from 
God. Accordingly, a succession of signal mi- 
racles were wrought to satisfy his mind, and 
to confirm his faith. The refection of kid's- 
fiesh and bread, which the hospitable Gideon 
quickly got ready for the stranger, was as he 
directed, laid upon a rock before him, and 
when he touched it with the end of his staff, 
a spontaneous fire arose by which it was 
consumed, as a sacrifice, and at the same 
time the stranger disappeared. After this, 
at the special desire of Gideon, " a sign " of 
his own choosing was granted to him. A 
fleece which he laid upon the threshing-floor 
(in the open air) was saturated with dew, 
while the soil around was all dry ; and again, 
condescending to his prayer, the Lord was 
pleased to reverse this miracle, by exempting 
the fleece alone from the dewy moisture 
which bespread the ground : Gideon was 
satisfied. 

Yet the family from which the deliverer 
was chosen, was not less tainted by the sins 
than visited by the punishments of Israel ; 
for Joash, the father of Gideon, had erected 
an altar to Baal, at Ophrah, the town of his 
residence, at which the people of that place 
rendered their idolatrous services to that 
idol. This altar Gideon was directed to 
destroy, and in its place to erect, over the 
rock on which his offering had been con- 
sumed, an altar to Jehovah. It would seem 
that Joash himself was brought back to his 
fealty to Jehovah by the first of the miracles 
we have related, of which, probably, Gideon 
was not the sole witness : for when the men 



206 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book 



of Ophrah, early in the following morning, 
arose to render their worship to Baal, and, 
finding his altar overthrown, demanded the 
death of Gideon, his father stood forward to 
vindicate his conduct. He undauntedly 
retorted the sentence of death against the 
idolaters themselves, for their apostasy from 
Jehovah. By demanding the punishment of 
Gideon for his act against Baal, they recog- 
nised in fact the fairness of the punishments 
denounced by the law against those indi- 
viduals or cities which turned away from 
Jehovah to serve other gods ; and this, 
coupled with the derision of Joash at the 
impotency of Baal to vindicate or avenge his 
own cause, so wrought upon the people of 
that place, that they were among the fore- 
most to gather to him when he sounded the 
trumpet of war. He then sent messengers 
throughout his own tribe of Manasseh (on 
both sides the Jordan), as well as through 
those of Asher, Naphtali, and Zebulon. And 
so cheerfully was the call obeyed that Gideon 
soon found himself at the head of 32,000 
men. With this force Gideon marched to 
the mountains of Gilboa, where he found 
vast multitudes of the enemy encamped 
before him in the plain of Esdraelon. This 
fine plain had probably been before their 
favourite resort ; but they seem to have con- 
gregated there in unusual numbers as soon 
as they heard of Gideon's preparations. 
And now that the people might have no 
cause to attribute their deliverance to their 
own numbers and prowess, it pleased the 
Divine King of Israel to reduce this im- 
portant army to a mere handful of spirited 
men. In the first place Gideon -was directed 
to proclaim liberty for all who now, in sight 
of the enemy, were " fearful and afraid," to 
return to their own homes. This proclamation, 
according to the law *, ought in all cases to 
have been made; but it seems that from 
some reason or other (perhaps either from 
ignorance of the law, or from supposing that 
it was not intended to apply to such a case 
as the present), it would not have been made 
by Gideon without the special command 
which he received. Such a law, or practice, 
however inapplicable, or even ruinous it 

* Deut. xx. 8. 



might prove under the military systems and 
tactics of modern Europe, was well calculated 
to act beneficially in the warfare of those 
early times ; for as everything then depended 
on the individual courage and prowess of those 
engaged, the faint-hearted were more likely 
to damage than assist those on whose side 
they appeared ; as their conduct was toler- 
ably certain to bring about results favour- 
able to themselves, and discouraging to their 
more valorous companions. In the present 
instance the result was, that, although the 
men composing the army of Gideon had 
come forward voluntarily, above two-thirds 
of them were so intimidated in the actual pre- 
sence of danger, that they took advantage of 
this permission to depart to their own homes. 
Of the 32,000, only 10,000 remained with 
Gideon. Yet as these were men of valour, 
as evinced by their determination to remain, 
room for vain-glorious boastings was still 
left, and therefore Gideon was informed that 
the number was still too large, and that a 
further reduction must be made. The pro- 
cess of this second selection was very curious. 
All those were dismissed who, in drinking at 
the watering-place, stooped down to drink in 
large draughts of water at the surface ; but 
those who merely "lapped" the water, or 
took it up in the hollow of their hands to 
drink, were retained. The different methods 
of drinking has been supposed to have dis- 
tinguished the self-indulgent from the more 
manly and active men. The latter — those 
who took up the water in their hollowed 
hands— were but 300 out of the 10,000 ; and 
these were declared sufficient for the enter- 
prise. 

The night after this, Gideon, with his 
faithful follower Phurah, went down to the 
camp of the enemy, in consequence of an 
intimation that he would there hear matter 
for his encouragement. What he heard was 
one soldier, just awakened, telling a dream 
to his companions. He had dreamed that he 
saw a barley-cake roll down from the hills to 
the Midianitish camp, where it overthrew 
the first tent to which it came. The inter- 
pretation which the other gave was : — " This 
is nothing else save the sword of Gideon, the 
son of Joash, a man of Israel : for into his 



CHAP. II.] 



FROM JOSHUA TO GIDEON. 



207 



hand hath God delivered Midian and all the 
host." 

Several facts are indicated by this inci- 
dent ; such as the stress generally laid upon 
dreams in that age, a3 indicative of contin- 
gent results, — the honour attached to the 
office of spy, as one of danger, and which 
was, therefore, as in the Mosaic age, assigned 
to, or undertaken by the very chief persons 
in the army, — and the truly oriental want of 
sentinels and pickets, even in the face of the 
enemy. This indeed may have been noticed 
on many former occasions ; and to this 
astonishing neglect of a precaution which 
seems to us so obvious and so simple, may 
be attributed the facility and success of those 
sudden surprises of which we so often read 
in the military history of those early ages. 

Gideon no sooner heard the dream and its 
interpretation than he understood and ac- 
cepted the sign. He returned to his own 
small band, and proceeded to carry into im- 
mediate execution a remarkable stratagem 
which had already been suggested to him. 
He divided his 300 men into three com- 
panies. Every man was provided with a 
trumpet in one hand, and in the other a 
pitcher containing a lighted lamp. They 
were then stationed in silence and darkness 
at different points on the outside of the 
enemy's camp. Then, on a signal given by 
Gideon all the three companies, at the same 
instant, blew their trumpets, exposed their 
lamps, broke the pitchers which had con- 
cealed them, and then continued shouting, 
u The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon!"* 
The terrible din and crash which thus sud- 
denly broke in upon the stillness of mid- 
night, with the equally sudden blaze of light 
from three hundred lamps, which illumined 
its darkness, struck an instant panic into 
the vast host of Midian, suggesting to them 
that the lamp-bearing trumpeters (whose 
numbers must have been greatly magnified 
in the confused apprehension of men just 
awakened) were but the advanced guard of 
the Hebrew host whom they were lighting 

* The hint of this watchword was taken from the inter- 
pretation of the Midianitish soldier's dream, " the sword of 
Gideon," to which Gideon, with eq al piety and modesty, 
prefixed, «« the sword of Jehovah." 



to the attack on the camp. They therefore 
fled in all directions, through the openings 
between the three companies. In their mid- 
night flight, not doubting that the Hebrews 
had fallen upon them, they mistook friends 
for foes, and vast multitudes of them 
perished by each other's swords. The sur- 
vivors, in their further flight, came up with 
the several parties which had been dismissed 
by Gideon to their homes, and these com- 
mitted a terrible slaughter among the fugi- 
tives. Gideon also sent messengers desiriDg 
the Ephraimites to seize the various fords of 
the Jordan, between the two lakes, and 
thereby prevent the escape of any of the 
fugitives eastward, which was the direction 
they would naturally take. In this terrible 
overthrow no less than 120,000 of the various 
tribes of "the children of the east" perished ; 
and so completely were the Midianites sub- 
dued that from that time " they lifted up 
their heads no more." 

A remnant of 15,000, headed by their 
emirs, Zebah and Zalmunna, managed to 
escape across the river (probably before the 
Ephraimites had seized the fords), and 
having reached a distance where they deemed 
themselves safe from further pursuit, they 
ventured to encamp. But Gideon himself, 
with his faithful 300, continued the pursuit 
even to that distance — even into the land of 
the tent-dwellers — and falling suddenly 
upon the camp, which lay carelessly secure, 
the already scared Midianites were com- 
pletely overthrown. The two emirs them- 
selves were taken alive and brought before 
Gideon. He had formed, for those times, 
the singularly generous intention to spare 
their lives; but when he gathered, from 
their own lips, that they had created a case 
of blood-revenge between himself and them, 
by putting to death, near Mount Tabor, his 
brethren, " the sons of his own mother," he, 
as the legal avenger of their blood, slew 
these emirs with his own hand. 

Gideon seems to have been a man emi- 
nently qualified for the high and difficult 
station to which he was called. Firm even 
to sternness, where the exhibition of the 
stronger qualities seemed necessary, and in 
war "a mighty man of valour," — we are 



208 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



[book nr. 



called upon in his case, more frequently than 
in any other which has occurred, to admire 
his truly courteous and self-retreating cha- 
racter, and that nice and difficult tact — dif- 
ficult, because spontaneously natural — in the 
management of men, which is a rarer and 
finer species of judgment, and by which he 
was intuitively taught to say the properest 
word, and do the properest deed at the most 
proper time. This is the true secret of his 
ultimate popularity and influence, which 
much exceeded that enjoyed by any judge 
before him. Some instances of the qualities 
which we have indicated have already ap- 
peared, and others will presently occur. 

The Ephraimites who had guarded the 
J ordan, having performed all that their duty 
required, hastened to join Gideon in the pur- 
suit of the Midianites, They met him on 
his return, and laid before him the heads of 
Oreb and Zeeb*, two emirs of Midian whom 
they had taken and slain. This tribe of 
Ephraim, which was, after that of Judah, 
the most important in Israel, was exceed- 
ingly jealous of its superiority ; and was 
therefore not a little annoyed that an ob- 
scure Abiezrite should have undertaken so 
great an enterprise as that now happily com- 
pleted, without consulting them. They now 
took occasion to remonstrate with him 
sharply on the subject, but were soon pacified 
by his modest and good-tempered answer. 
" What have I done now in comparison with 
you % " he said. " Is not the gleaning of the 
grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of 
Abiezer? God hath delivered into your 
hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb ; 
and what was I able to do in comparison of 
you 1 " Gideon knew what Solomon taught 
long after, "A soft answer turneth away 
wrath." 

"When he had crossed the Jordan in pur- 
suit of the fugitives, he was anxious to 
obtain for his small band — " faint, yet pur- 
suing" — refreshments from the town of 
Succoth, which he passed, and afterwards 
from that of Penuel; but he was in both 

* The names mean Crow and Wolf. It would seem that 
the chiefs of the Midianites (like the North American In- 
dians) took the names of animals, as significant of qualities 
to which they aspired. 



cases refused. The inhabitants seem to 
have been fearful of bringing upon them- 
selves the vengeance of the Midianites, to 
whom they had for seven years been subject, 
and against whom they held it to be very 
unlikely that he would succeed with so small 
a force. They not only refused, but added 
insult to injury. Instead of chastising them 
on the spot, he coolly told both that he 
would do so on his return ; and he now kept 
his promise. Coming upon Succoth by sur- 
prise, before the sun was up, he took the 
chief persons of Succoth, and, as he had 
threatened, scourged them to death with 
thorns and briars. Of Penuel he made a 
still severer example, for he beat down the 
fortress-tower of that city, and put to death 
the men belonging to it. 

The Israelites, in the warmth of their gra- 
titude, offered to make Gideon their king, 
and to continue the crown to his descend- 
ants. This proposal, which clearly shows 
how unmindful the Israelites had become of 
the great political principle of the theocracy, 
with which they were so unwarrantably 
ready to dispense, was nobly rejected by 
Gideon, who replied to it in the true spirit 
of the theocracy, — " I will not rule over you, 
neither shall my son rule over you : Jehovah 
shall rule over you." But while thus alive 
to the true political character of the Mosaic 
institutions, he was not equally cognisant of 
the religious obligations of that system. | 
When he was called to his great work at 
Ophrah, he had been instructed to build an 
altar on the rock on which his offering had 
been accepted, and himself to offer sacrifices 
there. This probably led him to conclude 
that it would be right to form a religious 
establishment at that spot, for the worship 
of God by sacrifice. A more perfect ac- 
quaintance with the principles of the law 
would have taught him otherwise. How- 
ever, to this object he applied the produce of 
the golden ear-rings of the Midianites, 
which, at his special request (not unlike that 
of Aaron, Exod. xxxii. 2), were cheerfully 
granted to him by the army as his share of 
the spoil. The weight being 1700 shekels, 
the gold thus obtamed must have been 
worth upwards of 3000£. of our money ; and 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



209 



the " ephod " which he is described as having 
made with it, probably included not only 
" the priests' dress," as the word signifies, 
but a regular sacerdotal establishment in his 
own town, where sacrifices might be con- 
stantly offered. For this purpose such a 
sum as he applied to it must have been fully 
requisite. It has been disputed whether 
Gideon himself officiated as priest, or, like 
Micah, engaged a Levite for that purpose. 
The latter seems the more likely supposition, 
unless, from having been once directed to 
offer sacrifice, Gideon concluded he had a 
superior claim to discharge that office. 

However well intended this establishment 
may have been in the first instance, this was 
a most mistaken and dangerous step, re- 
sembling, in its principle, the establishment 
which the Danites had formed in the north. 
It infringed upon the peculiar claims of 
Shiloh, the seat of the Divine Presence ; and 



the result of these and all attempts to form 
separate establishments affords ample illus- 
tration of the design with which the formal 
worship of God by sacrifice was confined to 
one particular locality. It proved " a snare 
unto Gideon and his house," in worshipping 
the true God in an improper manner. It 
became popular to " all Israel," who resorted 
to Ophrah to render that worship and service 
which was due only at the sacred tabernacle ; 
and, with the predisposition to idolatry, it is 
not wonderful that, free at this place from 
the restraint and supervision which the 
worship at Shiloh imposed, the service at 
this place soon became associated with idol- 
atrous ideas and objects, until at last it de- 
generated into rank idolatry after the death 
of Gideon. He survived and ruled Israel 
forty years after his victory over the Midian- 
ites, and during all this time the tranquillity ; 
of Israel appears to have been undisturbed. 



CHAPTER III. 
FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



Gideon left no less than seventy sons by his 
numerous wives, besides one spurious son 
called Abimelech, by a concubine (whom 
Josephus calls Drumah) who belonged to 
Shechem. A bastard among seventy legiti- 
i mate sons was not likely to be pleasantly cir- 
cumstanced when his father was dead, and it 
is not surprising that he soon withdrew from 
among them to his mother's relations at 
Shechem. They seem to have been persons 
of some consideration in that place. 

After the death of Gideon, the history, 
without stating the fact, seems to require us 
to suppose that his sons had been invited to 
take the government, or to share it among 
them ; and that they, actuated by the same 
noble, because disinterested, regard for the 
principles of the theocracy which had influ- 
enced their father, had declined the offer. 
But Abimelech, a bold bad man, was of a 
different spirit. He soon saw the advantage 



which he might take of the existing posture 
of affairs. Prompted by him, his uncles and 
other maternal connections suggested to the 
chief people of Shechem his willingness to 
undertake the charge which the people 
generally were anxious to see in the hands 
of a son, or some of the sons, of Gideon. 
They suggested whether it were not much 
better that one man should reign over them, 
than that they should be subject to all the 
sons of Gideon, seventy persons in number ; 
and if the government of one man was to be 
desired, who had so strong a claim to their 
preference and attachment as one so closely 
connected with them as Abimelech ? These 
suggestions had their weight upon the lead- 
ing men of Shechem, particularly the con- 
sideration that he was their " brother." 
They supplied him with money out of the 
treasury of Baal-berith, whose worship seems 
to have been that to which the Israelites 



p 



210 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



were at this time the most inclined. The 
sum was not large*, but it served him to 
hire a set of unprincipled men, prepared for 
any undertaking he might propose. And, 
with the usual short-sightedness of wicked 
men, thinking to concentrate in his own per- 
son the attachment of the Israelites to the 
house of Gideon, as well as to extinguish 
that which was likely to be the most active 
opposition he would have to encounter, Abi- 
melech marched his troop to Ophrah, where 
he put to death all his brethren, the sons of 
Gideon, with the exception of the youngest, 
named Jothain, who managed to escape. 
This is the first example of a stroke of bar- 
barous policy which has since been very 
common in the history of the east. In the 
first instance it had the effect he intended, 
for on his return to Shechem the people of 
that place assembled and anointed Abimelech 
king, close to a pillar of stone that stood 
near that town, perhaps the same which 
Joshua had set up there as a memorial of 
the covenant with God. 

When Jotham was made acquainted with 
this, he repaired secretly to the neighbour- 
hood of Shechem, and taking advantage of 
some festival which brought the inhabitants 
together outside the town, he appeared sud- 
denly on a cliff overlooking the valley in 
which they were assembled, and, in a loud 
voice, called their attention to his words. 
He then delivered that earliest and very fine 
parable, which represents the trees as making 
choice of a king : — The olive refused to leave 
its oil, the fig-tree its sweetness, and the 
vine-tree its wine, to reign over the trees 
(thus intimating the refusal of Gideon's 
sons) ; but the upstart bramble (representing 
Abimelech) accepts, with great dignity, the 
offered honour, and even proposes the con- 
ditions of its acceptance. These are ex- 
quisitely satirical, both in their terms and in 
their application—" If in truth ye anoint me 
king over you, then come, and put your 
trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire 
come out of the bramble, and devour the 

* Seventy shekels of silver, about equal to eight pounds 
of our money. But proper allowance must be made for a 
great difference in the real value of money, although the 
precise amount of that difference cannot be stated. 



cedars of Lebanon." That they might be at 
no loss to understand his meaning, Jotham 
gave the obvious moral, in which he included 
a bitter rebuke of the ingratitude of the 
people to their deliverer, all whose sons, save 
himself, they had slain; together with an 
intimation, which proved prophetic, of the 
probable result. He then fled with all haste, 
in fear of Abimelech ; and ultimately settled 
beyond his reach, at Beer, in the tribe of 
Benjamin. 

Abimelech reigned three years in Shechem, 
during which he so disgusted the men by 
whom he had been raised to that bad 
eminence on w r hich he stood, that they ex- 
pelled him from their city. In return, he, 
with the aid of the desperate fellows who 
remained with him, did his utmost to dis- 
tress the inhabitants, so that at the season of 
vintage they were afraid to go out into their 
vineyards to collect their fruits. Hearing 
of these transactions, one Gaal went over to 
Shechem with his armed followers and kins- 
men, to see how they might be turned to his 
advantage. We know not precisely who this 
person was, or whence he came ; but there 
are circumstances in the original narrative 
which would suggest that he was a Canaanite, 
descended from the former rulers of She- 
chem, and that his people also were a rem- 
nant of the original Shechemites. He came 
so opportunely, that the people very gladly 
accepted his protection during the vintage. 
In the feasts which followed the joyful 
labours of that season, Gaal, who seems to 
have been a cowardly, boasting fellow, spoke 
contemptuously of Abimelech, and talked 
largely of what he could and would do, if 
authority were vested in him. This was 
heard with mucn indignation by Zebul, one 
of the principal magistrates of the city, who 
lost no time in secretly sending to apprise 
Abimelech how matters stood, and advised 
him to show himself suddenly before the 
city, when he would undertake to induce 
Gaal to march out against him. Accord- 
ingly one morning, when Zebul and other 
principal persons were with Gaal at the gate 
of the city, armed men were seen descend^ 
ing the hills. Zebul amused Gaal till they 
came nearer, and then, by reminding him of 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



211 



his recent boastings, compelled him to draw 
out his men to repel the advance of Abime- 
lech. They met, and no sooner did Gaal see 
a few of his men fall, than, with the rest, he 
fled hastily into the city. Zebul availed 
himself of this palpable exhibition of im- 
potence, if not cowardice, to induce the 
people of Shechem to expel Gaal and his 
troop from the town. Abimelech, who was 
staying at Arumah, a place not far off, was 
informed of this the next morning, as well 
as that the inhabitants, although no longer 
guarded by Gaal, went out daily to the 
labours of the field. He therefore laid 
ambushes in the neighbourhood ; and when 
the men were come forth to their work in 
the vineyards, two of the ambushed parties 
rose to destroy them, while a third hastened 
to the gates to prevent their return to the 
town. The city itself was then taken, and 
Abimelech caused all the buildings to be 
destroyed, and the ground to be strewn with 
salt, as a symbol of the desolation to which 
his intention consigned it. The fortress, 
however, still remained, and a thousand men 
were in it. But they, fancying that it was 
not tenable, withdrew to the " hold of the 
house of the Berith," which had the advan- 
tage of standing in a more elevated and 
commanding position. This, it will be noted, 
is the first temple which we read of in 
Scripture. On perceiving this, Abimelech 
cut down the bough of a tree with his battle- 
axe, and bore it upon his shoulder, directing 
all his men to do the same. The wood was 
deposited against the entrance and walls of 
the strong-hold, and, when kindled, made a 
tremendous fire, in which the building and 
the thousand men it contained in it were 
destroyed. 

To follow up this victory, Abimelech 
marched against Thebez, another revolted 
town. As before, he took the town itself 
with little difficulty, but all the people had 
shut themselves up in the tower or fortress, 
which offered a more serious obstacle. How- 
ever, Abimelech advanced to the door with 
the intention of burning it down, when a 
woman threw a large stone from the battle- 
ments above. It fell upon him, and broke 
his skull ; and mindful, even in that bitter 



moment, of that principle of military honour 
which counts death from a woman's hands 
disgraceful, he hastily called to his armour- 
bearer to thrust him through with his sword, 
that it might not be said a woman slew him. 
But the disgrace which he desired to avoid, 
attached for ever to his name; for it was 
always remembered to his dishonour that a 
woman slew him. 

After Abimelech, Tola, of the tribe of 
Issachar, but dwelling in Mount Ephraim, 
governed the people for twenty- three years. 

He was succeeded by Jair, a Gileadite (of 
eastern Manasseh), who judged Israel twenty- 
two years. His opulence is indicated by his 
being the owner of thirty villages, which, 
collectively, bore the name of Havoth-Jair 
(Jair's villages), and that he had thirty 
sons, all of whom he could afford to mount 
on young asses. In those days horses and 
mules were not in use among the Hebrews. 
Their place was not unworthily filled by 
the fine breed of asses which the country 
afforded ; and to possess as many as thirty of 
these, young and vigorous, and fit for the 
saddle (implying the possession of many 
more, older and of inferior condition), was 
no questionable sign of wealth. 

As the administration of these two judges 
was peaceable, the notice of them is con- 
fined to a few lines ; the chief design of the 
sacred historian being to record the cala- 
mities which the Israelites drew upon them- 
selves by their apostacies to the idolatries of 
the surrounding nations, and their provi- 
dential deliverances upon their repentance 
and return to their God and King. After 
the calm of these administrations, they mul- 
tiplied their idolatries, and, in punishment 
for this, they were brought under a servitude 
to the Ammonites, which continued for 
eighteen years, and was particularly severe 
upon the tribes beyond Jordan, although the 
southern and central tribes on this side the 
river — Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim, were 
also subdued. 

Corrected by calamity, the Israelites put 
away their idols and cried to God for pardon 
and deliverance. In reply to their suit, they 
were reminded of the deliverances which 
they had already experienced, notwithstand- 

p 2 



212 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



ing which they had repeatedly turned to 
serve other gods. Their prayer was there- 
fore refused ; and they were told — " Go and 
cry unto the gods which ye have chosen ; let 
them deliver you in the time of your tribu- 
lation." Their reply to this was very pro- 
per ; — " We have sinned : do thou unto us 
whatever seemeth good unto thee; deliver 
us only, we pray thee, this day." And forth- 
with they rooted out the remains of idolatry 
from, among them, and worshipped Jehovah 
with such singleness and zeal that " his 
soul was grieved for the misery of Israel." 

There was a man called Jephthah, who 
was, like Abimelech, the spurious son of a 
man who had a large family of legitimate 
children. When the father died, the other 
sons expelled Jephthah from among them, 
saying, " Thou shalt not inherit in our 
father's house ; for thou art the son of a 
strange woman." As this last phrase gene- 
rally denotes a foreigner, or one not of 
Israel, this treatment, although very harsh, 
was less unjust, under the peculiar circum- 
stances of the Hebrew constitution, than 
might at the first view appear ; for it was a 
strong point of the Mosaic policy to discou- 
rage all connection with foreigners (necessa- 
rily idolaters) ; and nothing was better cal- 
culated to this end, for a people like the 
Hebrews, than the disqualification of the 
progeny of such connections from receiving 
a share in the inheritance. 

On this Jephthah withdrew into " the land 
of Tob," towards the borders of the desert : 
and as he had before this found opportunities 
of establishing a character for spirit and 
courage, he was soon joined by a number of 
destitute and idle young men, who were led 
by inclination, or more imperative induce- 
ments, to prefer the free life he led to the 
sober habits which a settling community re- 
quires. Besides, from pastoral societies, such 
as those beyond Jordan, the step into the 
free life of the desert is much shorter than 
it would be among a more agricultural peo- 
ple. It is really useless to attempt to con- 
sider J ephthah's troop otherwise than as a 
set of daring, careless fellows, acting as men 
do at the present day act in the east under 
similar circumstances, and similarly brought 



together. Being without any other means 
of subsistence, they unquestionably lived by 
a sort of robbery, as we should call it now, 
examples of which are found in all rude 
states of society, and to which, in such states 
of society, no one dreams of attaching dis- 
grace. They lived doubtless by raids, or 
plundering excursions, into the neighbour- 
ing small states, driving off the cattle, and 
taking whatever came to their hands ; and 
we may from analogy conclude that they 
waylaid and levied black- mail upon caravans, 
when composed of parties which they had no 
reason to treat with favour. Their point of 
honour probably was, to abstain from any 
acts against their own countrymen; and 
this exception existing, the body of the 
Israelites must have regarded the perform- 
ances of J ephthah and his troop with favour, 
especially if, as is likely, they were thorns in 
the sides of the Ammonites, and took plea- 
sure to annoy, in their own quarters, the 
enemies of Israel. However this may be, 
the courage and conduct of Jephthah be- 
came so well known by his successful enter- 
prises, that when, after their repentance, the 
tribes beyond Jordan determined to make a 
stand against the Ammonites, but felt the 
want of a leader, they agreed that there was 
no known person so fit as Jephthah to lead 
them to battle. The chiefs of Gilead, his 
native district, therefore went in person to 
the land of Tob, to solicit this already cele- 
brated person to undertake the conduct of 
the expedition. They were rather harshly 
received. " Did ye not hate me," said the 
hero, "and expel me out of my father's 
house 1 and why are ye come unto me now, 
when ye are in distress?" They, however, 
continued to press him, and intimated that, 
as had been usual in such cases, the govern- 
ment of, at least, the land of Gilead, would 
be the reward of his success. This was very 
agreeable to Jephthah, who forthwith ac- 
companied them to Mizpeh, where this 
agreement was solemnly ratified, and all 
things necessary for conducting the war 
were regulated. 

By the time Jephthah had organised his 
forces in Mizpeh, the Ammonites, taking 
alarm, had assembled a numerous army in 



CHAP. III.] 



FHOM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



213 



Gilead. Although, from his previous habits 
of life, we should hardly have expected it 
from him, we find the Hebrew general com- 
mencing the war with much more than usual 
attention to those formalities which are 
judged necessary to render the grounds of 
quarrel manifest. He sent ambassadors to 
the king of the Ammonites, requiring to 
know why he had come to fight against the 
Hebrews in their own land. The king, in 
reply, alleged that he came to recover the 
land taken from his ancestors by the Israel- 
ites, on their way from Egypt, and of which 
he, therefore, required peaceable restitution. 
Jephthah in his reply gave a fair and clear 
recital of the whole transaction which had 
put these lands into the possession of the 
Hebrews, and he refused to surrender them 
on the following grounds: — 1. He denied 
that the Ammonites had any existing title 
to the lands, for they had been driven out of 
these lands by the Amorites before the He- 
brews appeared ; and that they (the Hebrews) 
in overcoming and driving out the Amorites, 
without any assistance from, or friendly un- 
derstanding with, the Ammonites, became 
entitled to the territory which the conquered 
people occupied. 2. That the title of the 
Israelites was confirmed by a prescription of 
above 300 years, during which none of 
Ammon or of Moab had ever reclaimed these 
lands ; and,— 3, as an argumentum adhomi- 
nem, he alleged that the God of Israel was 
as well entitled to grant his people the lands 
which they held as was their own god 
Chemosh, according to their opinion, to grant 
to the Ammonites the lands which they now 
occupied. This admirable and well-reasoned 
statement concluded with an appeal to hea- 
ven to decide the justice of the cause by the 
event of the battle which was now inevi- 
table. 

The result was such as might be expected. 
Jephthah defeated the Ammonites with great 
slaughter, and reduced the nation to subjec- 
tion. 

But not joy to exalt and gladden his heart, 
but a bitter grief to rend it deeply, awaited 
the victor on his return to Mizpeh. Feeling, 
perhaps, that he had not, like former de- 
liverers, been expressly and publicly called 



and appointed by God to the work he had 
undertaken, he had sought to propitiate 
heaven by a vow, that if allowed to return 
to his home in peace, whatsoever first came 
forth to meet him should be offered as a 
burnt-offering to Jehovah. 

Jephthah had no child, save one daughter, 
a virgin, beautiful and young. And she, 
when the news came of his great victory, and 
of his return in triumph and peace, went 
forth at the head of her fair companions to 
meet her glorious father, dancing joyously 
to their timbrels as he drew nigh. Here, 
then, was the object of his vow — his cherished 
daughter — the only object in the world 
which could call forth those kindly sympa- 
thies and tendernesses which lurk deep within 
even those natures which have been the 
most scarred and roughened in the storms of 
life. The desolated father rent his clothes, 
crying, " Alas ! my daughter, thou hast 
brought me very low ! . . . for I have opened 
my mouth unto Jehovah, and I cannot go 
back." Then understanding the nature of 
his vow, that noble maiden, mindful only 
that Israel was delivered, and impressed 
with the solemn obligation which that vow 
imposed, sought not to turn her father from 
his purpose, or encouraged him to seek those 
evasions which others have since discovered 
for him. With unexampled magnanimity 
she cried, " My father, if thou hast opened 
thy mouth unto Jehovah, do to me according 
to that which hath proceeded out of thy 
mouth; forasmuch as Jehovah hath taken 
vengeance for thee upon thine enemies, even 
of the children of Ammon." All she desired 
was that she might be allowed for two months 
to wander among the mountains, with her 
companions, to bewail that it was not her 
lot to be a bride and mother in Israel. At 
the end of that time Jephthah " did with her 
according to his vow." 

It is much to be regretted that the reluc- 
tance of the sacred writer to express in plain 
terms the dreadful immolation which we 
believe to be thus indicated, has left the 
whole matter open as a subject of dispute. 
The early Jewish and Christian writers (in- 
cluding Josephus) made no question that 
Jephthah, under a most mistaken notion of 



214 



duty, did, after the manner of the heathen, 
really offer his daughter in sacrifice ; but the 
ingenuity of modern criticism has discovered 
the alternative that she was not immolated 
on the altar, but was devoted to perpetual 
virginity in the service of the tabernacle. It 
must be confessed that the subject is one of 
such difficulty, as to render it hard to reach 
a positive conclusion. But on anxiously re- 
considering the question which has before 
engaged our attention *, we are sorry to feel 
constrained to adhere to the harsher alterna- 
tive, which we were then led to consider the 
most probable. 

There was no institution among the Jews 
under which practical effect could be given 
to the alternative which modern interpreta- 
tion has provided; and even had not this 
been the case, there was, at the time that 
this devotement to the tabernacle must have 
taken place, no access to the tabernacle 
from the east; for Jephthah was about that 
time waging a bitter war with the tribe of 
Ephraim, in whose territory, at Shiloh, the 
ark was situated. This posture of affairs 
would preclude him from receiving from the 
priests those instructions and remonstrances 
which would have prevented that piteous 
immolation which he deemed his vow to re- 
quire. We are persuaded that the more 
thoroughly any one makes himself acquainted 
with the spirit of the time, the state of 
religion, the nature of the ideas which then 
prevailed, the peculiarities of the ecclesias- 
tical polity among the Hebrews, and the 
character of Jephthah himself, — the more 
strong will be his conviction that the in- 
fatuated hero really did offer his daughter 
in sacrifice, and the greater will the difficulty 
seem of providing any other alternative. 
The opinion of the Jews themselves is also 
entitled to some weight ; and at a time when 
they abhorred the idea of human sacrifices, 
they not only state it as an unquestionable 
fact that this sacrifice did take place, but 
ascribe the deposition of the line of Eleazer 
from the high-priesthood, and the substitu- 
tion of that of Ithamar, to the circumstance 
that the existing pontiff did not take mea- 

♦ * Pictorial Bible,* note on Judges xi. 



[book III. 

sures to prevent this stain upon the annals 
of Israel. 

We must consider how long the minds of 
the Israelites had been saturated with no- 
tions imbibed from the surrounding heathen, 
which implies the neglect, and consequent 
ignorance of the divine law ; and that among 
those ideas and practices that of the superior 
efficacy of human sacrifices occupied a pro- 
minent place. We may also reflect that a 
rough military adventurer, like Jephthah, 
had been even more than usually exposed to 
contaminating influences: such persons are 
also usually found to be superstitious, and 
are seldom capable of apprehending more 
than certain broad and hard features of such 
higher matters as are presented to their 
notice. Jephthah knew that human victims 
were generally regarded as in a peculiar de- 
gree acceptable to the gods ; and as historical 
facts are in general more familiarly known 
than dogmas, it was probably unknown to 
him that human sacrifices were abhorrent to 
Jehovah, while he was certain to know that 
Abraham had been expressly commanded by 
God himself to offer his beloved Isaac upon 
the altar; and although the completion of 
this act was prevented, it would be remem- 
bered that the patriarch obtained high 
praise because he had not withheld even his 
only and well-loved son from God. That 
Jephthah made such a vow at all, corrobo- 
rates the view we take of his character. It 
was superstitious ; and it implies his imper- 
fect knowledge of the law, which would have 
apprised him of various alternatives which 
would render the fulfilment of his vow in- 
compatible with obedience to the law. But 
to such a mind the literal accomplishment 
of a vow— whatever its purport — will appear 
the first of duties ; and in the fulfilment of 
such a vow as this, it would seem that the 
greater his own anguish, the more deeply 
the iron entered into his own soul, the more 
meritorious, and the more acceptable to God, 
the act of the offerer was deemed. 

The \irgins of Israel instituted an anni- 
versary commemoration of four days, which 
they spent in celebrating the praises and 
bewailing the fate of Jephthah's daughter. 

The misunderstanding with Ephraim to 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



215 



which we have incidentally alluded, was 
similar to that which the tact of Gideon had 
averted on a former occasion. That haughty 
and overbearing tribe had been called to the 
war in the first instance, but refused to take 
part in the enterprise; but when that enter- 
prise proved successful, they were astonished 
and mortified that Israel had been delivered 
by the Gileadites without their assistance. 
They then assembled tumultuously, and with 
many contemptuous and abusive expressions 
towards the Gileadites in general, and 
towards Jephthah in particular, they threat- 
ened to burn his house over his head, be- 
cause he had not called them to the last 
decisive action. The conqueror stated the 
matter as it actually happened; for his 
rough nature would not permit him to 
smooth down their ruffled plumes, as Gideon 
had done on a similar occasion. And then 
finding that they were still bent on mischief, 
he called out the Gileadites, who were highly 
exasperated at the reflections which had 
been cast upon them as " fugitives of 
Ephraim," — a base breed between Ephraim 
and Manasseh. A battle took place in which 
the Ephraimites were signally defeated. 
They had crossed over to the eastern side of 
the Jordan, and, after the victory, the 
Gileadites hastened to seize the fords of that 
river, to intercept those of the fugitives who 
attempted to return to their homes. But as 
Israelites of all the tribes were constantly 
passing the river, a test was necessary to 
distinguish the Ephraimites from the others. 
It is remarkable that the test chosen was 
that of pronunciation. When any man ap- 
proached to cross the river, he was asked, 
" Art thou an Ephraimite 1 " If he answered 
"Nay," they said, "Say now ^Aibboleth" 
(water-brooks) ; but if he were really an 
Ephraimite, he could not pronounce the sh, 
but gave the word as " /S'ibboleth ; " and was 
slain on the spot. This incident is curious 
as showing that lingual differences had 
already arisen by which particular tribes 
could be distinguished. In like manner a 
Galilean was, in the time of Christ, known 
at Jerusalem by his speech. But there is 
nothing in this out of the usual course. 
The differences of pronunciation among the 



several tribes were probably not greater, if 
as great, as those which the different counties 
of England offer. 

In this disastrous affair the loss of the 
Ephraimites amounted to 42,000 men. Such 
a success could be no matter of triumph to 
the unhappy Jephthah. His troubled life 
was not long protracted. He died after he 
had judged Israel six years. B.C. 1247. 

After Jephthah follow the names of three 
judges, the silence of the record concerning 
whose actions may be understood to indicate 
a period of tranquillity and ease. These 
were Ibzan, of Bethlehem in Ephraim, for 
seven years; Elon, a Zebulonite, for ten 
years; and Abdon, an Ephraimite, for eight 
years. Under the repose of these adminis- 
trations, however, the Hebrews again insen- 
sibly relapsed into Idolatry. For this they 
were brought under a rigorous servitude to 
their western foes, the Philistines, which [in 
its full rigour] lasted for forty years. This 
people had so recruited their strength since 
the days of Shamgar, that they now take a 
very conspicuous place in the Hebrew his- 
tory, forming by far the most powerful and 
inveterate enemies the Israelites had yet 
encountered. They continued much longer 
than any other power had done to wield the 
weapon by which the iniquities of Israel were 
chastised ; for it was not until the time of 
David that the deliverance was completed. 

When we read of the corrupt state of the 
nation at large, it would be a grievous error 
to infer that all had departed from God. 
There are various intimations that, in the 
worst times, not a few families were to be 
found religious and well regulated, and 
which maintained among themselves the 
faith of the one only God, and followed with 
exactitude all the requirement of the law. 
Thus, at a later day, when the prophet 
deemed that he was himself the only one by 
whom Jehovah was acknowledged, God him- 
self knew that there were in Israel 7000 
persons whose knees had not been bowed to 
Baal*. But although these were the salt of 
Israel, they could not preserve the mass from 
such putrefaction as required that it should 
be cast forth and trodden under foot. 

* 1 Kings xix. 18. 



216 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



And now, about the same time that the 
Israelites were cast forth to be trodden under 
foot by the Philistines, it pleased their 
offended King, while with the one hand he 
punished his revolted subjects, to provide 
with the other for the beginnings of their 
deliverance at a future day. For about that 
time, the angel of Jehovah appeared to the 
wife of Manoah, a Danite, who had been 
barren, and promised her a son, who was to 
be a Nazarite (a person consecrated to God) 
from the womb, and that in time he should 
begin to deliver Israel from the yoke of the 
Philistines. 

Accordingly the woman gave birth in due 
season to a son, on whom the name of Samson 
was bestowed. As the child grew, it became 
manifest that the most extraordinary bodily 
powers had been given to him : while, to 
prevent undue exaltation of spirit from the 
consciousness of superior powers, it was 
known to him that his gifts had no necessary 
dependence on the physical complication of 
his thews and sinews, but on his condition as 
a Nazarite, and on the unshorn hair which 
formed the sign and symbol of that condition. 

It is from the twentieth year of his age, 
which was also the twentieth of the bondage 
to the Philistines, that we are to date the 
commencement of Samson's vindictive admi- 
nistration. He proved to be a man of un- 
governable passions ; but, through the influ- 
ence of his destiny to begin the deliverance 
of Israel, it was so ordered that even his 
worst passions, and even the sorrows and 
calamities which these passions wrought 
upon himself, were made the instruments of 
distress and ruin to the Philistines. 

The fact that the territory occupied by 
the tribe of Dan, to which Samson belonged, 
immediately adjoined the country of the 
Philistines, in consequence of which he 
became well acquainted with that people, 
ministered occasion for most of his operations 
against them. And first — in the Philistine 
town of Timnath, Samson had seen a young 
woman with whom he was so well pleased 
that he resolved to obtain her for his wife. 
But as such matters were always adjusted 
between the parents of the respective parties, 
he went home and desired his father and 



I mother to secure this woman for him. His 
I parents would much have preferred that his 
choice had fallen on one of the daughters of 
his own people ; but seeing his determination 
was fixed, they yielded, and went back with 
him to Timnath. It was on this journey 
that Samson gave the first recorded indica- 
tion of the prodigious strength with which 
he was endowed, by slaying, without any 
weapon in his hands, a young and fierce lion 
by which he was assailed. 

At Timnath the proposals of his parents 
were favourably received by the parents of 
the damsel Samson sought in marriage. It 
was necessary, by the customs of the time 
and country, that at least a month should 
pass between such a proposal and the cele- 
bration of the marriage. At the expiration 
of this time Samson, again accompanied by 
his parents, went down to Timnath to claim 
his bride. On the way he turned aside to 
see what had become of the carcass of the 
lion he had slain on the former journey. In 
that climate the carcasses of animals left 
dead upon the ground are speedily devoured 
by jackals and vultures, and other beasts 
and birds which feed on carrion. Even 
insects contribute largely to this service. 
Accordingly Samson found only the clean 
skeleton of the lion, partially covered with 
the undevoured hide. In the cavity thus 
formed a swarm of bees had lodged and 
deposited their honey. At wedding feasts it 
was at this time usual for the young men 
then assembled together, to amuse themselves 
by proposing riddles — those who were unable 
to solve the riddle incurring a forfeiture to 
him by whom it was proposed, who himself 
was liable to a similar forfeiture if his riddle 
were found out. The adventure with the 
lion suggested to Samson the riddle which 
he proposed — " Out of the eater came forth 
meat, and out of the strong came forth 
sw%«tness." For three days they vainly 
tried to discover the meaning of this riddle ; 
and at last, rather than incur the heavy for- 
feiture of " thirty shirts and thirty change 
of garments," they applied to the bride, and 
threatened destruction to her family if she 
did not extract from her husband the required 
solution, and make it known to them. He 



CHAP. HI.J 



FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



217 



was very unwilling to tell her, declaring j 
that even his father and mother were igno- i 
rant of it. But she put in practice all the 
little arts by which women have ever carried 
their points with men usually weak — as 
Samson was, with all his corporal strength — 
and by her tears, and reproaches of his want 
of love and confidence, she so wearied him 
that he at length gave her the information 
she desired. The guests were consequently 
enabled, within the given time, to answer — 
'• What is sweeter than honey] What is 
stronger than a lion?" But Samson was 
well convinced that the wit of man could 
never have discovered the true solution 
without a knowledge of the circumstances, 
which they could only have obtained by 
tampering with his wife. He exclaimed 
indignantly — " If ye had not ploughed with 
my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle!" 
| H3 did not, however, as he might have done, 
refuse the payment of the forfeiture he had 
I thus unexpectedly incurred; but to obtain 
! it, he went and slew thirty of the Philistines 
near Ascalon, and gave their raiment to the 
persons who had expounded his riddle. He 
then returned to his own home, without 
again seeing his wife, with whose conduct he 
was deeply disgusted. 

But after some time his resentment sub- 
sided, and he went down to Timnath to 
revisit his wife, with a present of a kid. But 
he found that in the mean time she had 
been given in marriage to a man among the 
Philistines, who in former times had been 
his most dear and familiar friend, and who, 
in that character, he had chosen to act as 
his paranymph, or brideman, at the wedding. 
The incensed hero rejected with indignation 
the offer of the father to give him his 
youngest daughter in lieu of the woman he 
had married; and regarding, probably, the 
treatment he had received as in some degree 
resulting from the insolence of superiority, 
and from the contempt in which the Philis- 
tines held the people they had so long held 
in subjection, he considered himself justified 
in avenging his own injuries upon the 
Philistine nation, as part and parcel of 
the wrongs his nation suffered. This mode 
of taking his revenge was no less remarkable 



than effective. He obtained three hundred 
jackals, and tying them together, with a 
firebrand between their tails, let them loose. 
The affrighted animals, being so bound as to 
be obliged to run side by side, hastened for 
shelter to the fields of standing and ripened 
corn, which, at that dry season, when the 
corn was ripe, was easily kindled into a 
blaze. As the tortured jackals took different 
directions, the conflagration was very exten- 
sive ; nor was it confined to the standing 
corn, but wrought much damage among the 
olive grounds and vineyards, and consumed 
the corn which had been cut down and 
heaped for the threshing-floor. 

When the Philistines understood the im- 
mediate cause of this act of hostility on the 
part of Samson, they went and burned his 
wife and her father's house with fire ; thus 
punishing them for that breach of faith to 
which they were first led by the fear of this 
very punishment. If this act was intended 
to appease Samson, it had not that effect; 
for it did not prevent him from taking an 
opportunity which offered of discomfiting, 
with much slaughter, a considerable number 
of men belonging to that nation. He then 
withdrew to a strong rock, called Etam, in 
the tribe of Judah. To that place he was 
pursued by a large bedy of Philistines, whose 
presence occasioned great alarm to the 
Judaites. But when they understood that 
Samson individually was the sole object of 
this incursion, they most shamefully under- 
took of themselves to deliver him up to his 
enemies. Accordingly 3000 of them went 
up to him, feeling assured that he would not 
act against his own people. They told him 
they were come to bind him, and to put him 
into the hands of the Philistines. It strik- 
ingly illustrates the opinion Samson had of 
his own countrymen — an opinion which the 
circumstances justified — that before he con- 
sented to be bound, he obliged them to swear 
that they would not Mil him themselves. He 
then allowed them to bind him securely with 
two new ropes, and to take him down to the 
Philistines. When he was led to their 
camp, they raised a triumphant shout against 
him. As he heard that shout, " the Spirit 
of Jehovah came mightily upon him;" he 



218 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



burst his strong bands asunder as easily as 
if they had been tow burnt with fire, and 
seizing the jaw-bone of an ass which lay at 
hand, he flew upon the Philistines, and, with 
no other weapon, routed the whole thousands 
which had come against him, slaying many 
of their number. They only lived who fled. 
As Milton makes the hero observe — 

" Had Judah that day join'd, or one whole tribe, 
They had by this possess'd the towers of Gath, 
And lorded over them whom now they serve; 
But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt, 
And by their vices brought to servitude, 
Than to love bondage more than liberty, 
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty ; 
And to despise, or envy, or suspect, 
Whom God hath of his special favour raised 
As their deliverer'? If he aught begin 
How frequent to desert him, and at last 
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds." 

Samson Agonistes. 
Proudly confident in his strength, Samson 
was not deterred from going again among 
the Philistines, as soon as a motive occurred 
in the indulgence of that blind passion which 
had already brought him into much trouble, 
and which was destined to be his ruin. He 
went to Gaza, to visit a harlot of that place. 
His arrival was soon known ; and although 
this was a different state from that which 
had been the scene of his former exploits, 
the authorities of the place were too sensible 
of the importance of destroying this impla- 
cable enemy of their nation, to neglect the 
advantage which his folly had placed in 
their hands. The city gates were closed to 
prevent his escape ; and a strong guard was 
placed there to surprise and kill him in the 
morning. Samson, however, anticipated their 
plan ; and, rising at midnight, he went boldly 
to the gate, forced it from its place, and, by 
way of bravado, carried it off entire, posts, 
bars, and all, to the top of a hill on the way 
to Hebron. The guards were too much 
astonished and terrified to molest or pursue 
him. 

After this Samson did not again venture 
into the territory of the Philistines, but 
sought at home the indulgence of those 
blinding passions which make the strongest 
weak. " He loved a woman in the valley of 



Sorek," so celebrated for its vines. Her 
name was Dalilah, and she was probably of 
i Israel, although Josephus, to save the credit 
of his countrywomen, makes her a Philistine. 
The Philistines themselves took an anxious 
interest in all the movements of Samson, 
and were soon acquainted with this new 
besotment, of which they prepared to take 
advantage. A deputation, consisting of a 
principal person from each of the five Philis- 
tine states, went up the valley to the place 
where he was. And now, we observe, it was 
not their object to get possession of his 
person while he retained all his strength, 
but to ascertain how that strength might be 
taken from him. They were well persuaded 
that a strength so greatly exceeding all they 
knew or had ever heard of, and to which 
that possessed by the few descendants of 
Anak who lived among them, could not for 
an instant be compared, must be supernatural 
— the result of some condition which might 
be neutralised, or of some charm which 
might be broken. They therefore offered 
Dalilah the heavy bribe of 1100 shekels of 
silver from each of their number (amounting 
altogether to 687?.) to discover the secret of 
his great strength, and to betray him into 
their hands, that they might bind and afflict 
him. Samson amused her by telling her of 
certain processes whereby the weakness of 
other men would be brought upon him ; but 
each time the imposition was detected, by 
her putting the process to the proof. Then 
she continued to worry him by such trite 
but always effective reproaches, as, " How 
canst thou say 1 Hove thee,'' when thine heart 
is not with me? thou hast mocked me these 
three times, and hast not told me wherein 
thy great strength lieth." Thus day by day 
she pressed him and urged him, until " his 
soul was vexed unto death," and at last he 
told the whole truth to her — that he was a 
Nazarite from his birth, and that if he left 
that state by cutting off his hair, which had 
never yet been shorn or shaven, his extra- 
ordinary strength would depart from him. 
Dalilah saw by his earnestness that he had 
this time told her the truth. Accordingly 
she sent for a man, who, while the hero slept 
with his head upon her lap, shaved off the 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM GIDEON TO SAMSON. 



219 



luxuriant tresses of his hair. His strength 
departed from him: but he knew it not; 
and when aroused from his sleep by the 
approach of the Philistines to seize him, he 
thought to put forth his wonted power and 
destroy them all; but his listless arms 
refused to render him their wonted service, 
and he knew — too late — that " Jehovah had 
departed from him." 

The Philistines took and bound him ; and, 
to complete his disablement, put out both 
his eyes — a mode of rendering a public enemy 
or offender incapable of further offence, of 
which this is the first historical instance, but 
which has ever since been much resorted to 
in the kingdoms of the east*. They then 
took him down to Gath, and binding him 
with fetters of brass, employed him to grind 
in the prison-house. 

Nothing could more clearly than this 
deprivation evince the miraculous nature of 
the superhuman strength with which Samson 
had been for special purposes invested. 
Samson himself had known this before ; but 
now, weak, blind, bound, " disglorified," and 
degraded to a woman's service f, he had 
occasion and leisure to feel it ; and in his 
" prison-house" he probably learnt more of 
himself than he had known in all his previous 
life. Nor was this knowledge unprofitable. 
He felt that although he had begun to deliver 
Israel, this employment of the gifts confided 
to him had rather been the incidental effect 
of his own insensate passions than the result 
of those stern and steady purposes which 
became one who had so solemnly been set 
apart, even before his birth, to the salvation 
of his country. Such thoughts as these 
brought repentance to his soul; and as by 
this repentance his condition of Nazariteship 
was in some sort reneAved, it pleased God 
that, along with the growth of his hair, his 
strength should gradually return to him. 

* This barbarous infliction is, however, now — under the 
operation of those humanising influences which are in- 
sensibly pervading the east— in the course of being dis- 
continued. It was formerly more common in Persia than 
in any other country; but it became comparatively rare 
under the late king; and we believe that no instance has 
yet occurred in which the present monarch has resorted 
to it. 

f Grinding is almost invariably performed by women in 

the east. 



Fatally for the Philistines, they took the 
view that, since the strength of Samson had 
been the gift of the God of Israel, their 
triumph over him evinced that their own 
god, Dagon, was more powerful than J ehovah. 
This raised the matter from being a case 
between Samson and the Philistines, to one 
between Jehovah and Dagon ; and it thus 
became necessary that the Divine honour 
should be vindicated. An occasion for this 
was soon offered under aggravated circum- 
stances. 

The Philistines held a feast to Dagon, 
their god, who, as they supposed, had deli- 
vered their enemy into their hands. In the 
height of their festivity they thought of 
ordering Samson himself to be produced, 
that the people might feed their eyes with 
the sight of the degraded condition of one 
who had not long since been their dread. 
The assembled multitude greeted his appear- 
ance with shouts of triumph, and praised 
their god who had reduced " the destroyer 
of their country" to be their bond slave. 
After having been for some time exposed to 
their mockeries and insults, the blind hero 
desired the lad who led and held him by the 
hand, to let him rest himself against the 
pillars which sustained the chief weight of 
the roof of the temple, upon which no less 
than 3000 persons had assembled to view the 
spectacle, and celebrate Dagon's sacrifices. 
Thus placed, Samson breathed the prayer — 
" Lord Jehovah, remember me, I pray 
thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only 
this once, God, that I may be at once 
avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes ! " 
Saying this, he grasped the pillars with his 
mighty arms, and crying, " Let me die with 
the Philistines!" he bowed himself with 
such prodigious force that the pillars gave 
way, and then the roof fell in, destroying 
with one tremendous crash all who were 
above it and below it. Thus those whom 
Samson slew at his death were more in 
number than those he slew in his life. 

" It is remarkable that the exploits of 
Samson against the Philistines were per- 
formed singly, and without any co-opera- 
tion from his countrymen to vindicate their 
liberties : whether it was that the arm of the 



220 



Lord might be the more visibly revealed in 
him, or that his countrymen were too much 
depressed by the severity of their servitude 
to be animated by his example. They seem 
also to have feared him almost as much as 
they did the Philistines. Else why should 
3000 armed men of Judah have gone to 
persuade him to surrender himself to the 
Philistines, when, with such a leader, they 
might naturally expect to have been in- 
vincible ? or why, when he destroyed 
[routed ?]■ a thousand Philistines with so 



[book III. j 

simple a weapon, did they not join in pur- 
suit of the rest ? So true was the prediction 
of the angel to his mother, that he should 
only begin to deliver Israel."* 

It scarcely appears that Samson exercised 
any authority in the tribes ; but to carry on 
the historical time, he is counted as one of 
the judges, and his administration is com- 
puted at forty years, ending by his death, 
in the year 1222 b.c. 

* Hales, ii. 208. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAPTER IV. 
ELI AND SAMUEL. 



Samson was the last of the military heroes 
stirred up to deliver Israel from its oppressors. 
The two that followed, Eli and Samuel, were 
men of peace — the one a priest and the other 
a Levite. 

In the absence of a person specially called 
and appointed to deliver and judge the people, 
the civil government, by the principles of the 
theocracy, devolved on the high -priest, as the 
vizier of the Great King, having access to his 
presence and being the interpreter of his will. 
It is not easy to see that Samson exercised 
the civil government over any of the tribes. 
And although, therefore, in order to carry 
on the succession of times, it is convenient 
to say that at his death the government de- 
volved on the high-priest, yet, in fact, there is 
little reason to question that the high-priest 
exercised as much authority before as after. 
But in such times as these that authority 
was but small ; and chiefly, as it would ap- 
pear, judicial, particularly in adjusting dis- 
putes between persons of different tribes. 
The heads of the several tribes seem to 
have considered themselves fully competent 
to manage their internal affairs ; and their 
divided allegiance to Jehovah involved 
the political evil, that the authority of 
the general government was proportionably 
weakened, and the cohesion of the tribes in 



the same degree relaxed. Subject to this 
preliminary observation, the high-priest may, 
for historical convenience, be considered the 
successor of Samson. 

It is remarkable that functionaries so im- 
portant, in the theory of the Hebrew con- 
stitution, as the high-priests, are scarcely 
noticed in the history of the Judges. From 
Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, to Eli, a 
high-priest is not mentioned on any occasion, 
nor would even their names be known but 
for the list in Chronicles* where the order is 
thus given: — 

Abishua, Bukki, Uzzi, Zerahiah, Meraioth. 

In the person of Eli, a change in the line 
of succession to this high office took place ; 
as he was the first of the race of Ithamar, 
the second son of Aaron. But as the line 
of his elder son Eleazar was not extinct, and 
as the cause of the change is not assigned, 
some difficulty has been experienced in ac- 
counting for it. The Jews, as we have seen, 
suppose that it was because the existing 
pontiff had not taken measures sufficiently 
active to prevent Jephthah from sacrificing 
his daughter. But if, in the absence of all 
positive information, a conjecture might be 
hazarded, we would suggest the probability 
that the last pontiff of Eleazars line died 

* 1 Chron. iv. 4—16, 50—52. 



CHAP. IT.] 



ELI AND SAMUEL. 



221 



leaving no son old enough to take the office, 
and that it then (as afterwards in the succes- 
sion to the kingdom) devolved on his adult 
uncle or cousin of the line of Ithamar. Such 
a course resorted to in temporal successions 
to avoid the evils of a minority and regency, 
must have been much more necessary in the 
case of the high-priesthood. That the change 
took place in some such natural and quiet 
way, seems to afford the most satisfactory 
explanation of the silence of the record of a 
matter of such importance. 

Eli was a good and pious man, estimable 
in private life for his many virtues and the 
mildness of his character ; but he was greatly 
wanting in those sterner virtues which be- 
came his public station, and which were in- 
deed necessary for the repression of wicked- 
ness and the punishment of the wrong doer. 
As he grew old, he devolved much of his 
public duty upon his sons Hophni and 
Phineas, two evil-disposed men, who pos- 
sessed the energy their father lacked, with- 
out any of his virtues. Even in their 
sacred ministrations at the tabernacle, their 
conduct was so shamefully signalised by ra- 
pacity and licentiousness, that the people, 
through their misconduct, were led to abhor 
the offering of Jehovah. All this became 
known to Eli ; but, instead of taking the 
immediate and decisive measures which be- 
came his station, he contented himself with 
a mild and ineffective remonstrance. This 
weakness of Eli was justly counted a sin in 
that venerable person ; and a prophet was 
commissioned to warn him of the evil con- 
secpuences, which were no less than the ex- 
clusion of his race from the pontificate to 
which he had been advanced. But even this 
could not rouse the old man to the exertion 
which became his station ; but he seems 
rather to have acquiesced in this judgment 
as a thing not to be averted. 

The next reproof which this remiss judge 
received was through an unexpected channel. 

At the tabernacle, in personal attendance 
upon the high-priest, was a boy, a Levite, 
who having been the child signally granted 
in answer to the many prayers of Hannah, 
his previously barren mother, was by her 
consecrated from the womb, as a Nazarite, 



to Jehovah. In consequence of this, com- 
bined with his Levitical character, he had 
been left at the tabernacle as early as he 
could be separated from his mother's care, 
to render such services there as his tender 
years allowed. His name was Samuel : and 
as his pious mother came to Shiloh yearly 
with her husband to celebrate the passover 
(bringing with her a dress for her son), 
she had the delight of perceiving that he, 
growing up under the shadow of the altar, 
conducted himself with such propriety and 
discretion, that he stood very high in the 
favour of God and man. That he was thus, 
from his very infancy, constantly before the 
eyes of the people when they attended at the 
tabernacle, doubtless went far to prepare the 
way for that influence and station which he 
ultimately attained. 

It was the thirty-first year of Eli's admi- 
nistration, when Samuel, then twelve years 
of age, lay on his bed at night, that he heard 
a voice calling Mm by his name. He sup- 
posed that it was Eli who had called: he 
hastened to him, but found that it was not 
so. This was repeated three times ; and at 
the third time Eli concluding that it was 
the Lord who had called the lad, instructed 
him to answer, " Speak, Lord ; for thy servant 
heareth." Samuel obeyed, and the Voice then 
delivered to him, as an irrevocable doom, 
the former denunciations against Eli's house, 
" because his sons made themselves vile, and 
he restrained them not;" declaring that he 
would "do a thing in Israel at which both 
the ears of every one that heareth it shall 
tingle." In the morning, the lad, being 
pressed by Eli, delivered to him the message 
he had received. But even this only gave 
occasion for the further manifestation of 
the passive virtues of his character, — " It 
is Jehovah," he said ; " let him do what 
seemeth to him good." 

After this, matters went on for some time, 
much as they had done. Eli's sons pursued 
their old courses, making themselves still 
more vile ; and their father, though now well 
aware of the doom which hung over himself 
and them, took no measures in the hope to 
avert it. But as Samuel grew, the word 
of the Lord again came to him from time 



222 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



to time, and all Israel knew that he was 
established to be a prophet of Jehovah. 

Thus passed ten years, at the end of which 
the threatened judgments began to be in- 
flicted upon the house of Eli. At that time 
the Israelites rashly, and without consulting 
their Divine King, embarked in a war with 
the Philistines. In the forty years since the 
death of Samson, this people had recruited 
their strength, and recovered the courage of 
which they appear to have been for a season 
deprived by the astounding calamity which 
swept away so many of their chiefs and nobles. 
In the first engagement the Israelites were 
defeated, with the loss of 4000 men. On 
this they sent to Shiloh for the ark of the 
covenant, not doubting of victory under its 
protection. The two sons of Eli, Hophni 
and Phineas, attended it to the camp. On 
its arrival there, "all Israel shouted with a 
great shout, so that the earth rang again." 
On hearing this, and being apprised of its 
cause, the Philistines were filled with con- 
sternation; and the manner in which their 
alarm was expressed affords a very clear in- 
dication of the effect which had been pro- 
duced on their minds, by the wonders which 
Jehovah had wrought for the deliverance 
and protection of Israel. " Woe unto us ! " 
they cried ; " who shall deliver us out of the 
hand of these mighty Gods ] These are the 
Gods that smote the Egyptians with all the 
plagues in the wilderness." The procedure 
itself did not strike them as strange, — for it 
was not unusual among ancient nations to 
take their gods to their wars, — and the ark 
with its cherubim the Philistines supposed 
to be the god of the Hebrews. They did 
not question the existence of that God or his 
special care for his people ; neither did they 
deny his power, of which indeed they were 
afraid. They allowed Jehovah to be the 
god of the Hebrews, in the same sense in 
which they regarded Dagon to be their own 
god. It was his universal and exclusive 
power that they denied, or rather did not 
recognise. 

Notwithstanding their alarm, the Philistines 
did not give way to despair ; but like a brave 
people, which they were always, the imminence 
of the danger only stimulated them to the 



more strenuous exertions for victory. They 
cried to one another, "Be strong, and quit 
yourselves like men, ye Philistines, that 
ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they 
have been to you. Quit yourselves like men, 
and fight!" 

They fought : and the victory was given to 
them, to punish the Hebrews for their mis- 
doings, and for having engaged in this war 
without consulting their King, as well as to 
teach them that undue confidence in the ark 
itself was a superstition, if not an idolatry, 
apart from a due reliance on God himself, 
whose footstool only the ark was. Thirty 
thousand men of Israel fell in the battle and 
pursuit; the guilty sons of Eli were among 
the slain, and the ark itself was taken. 

Eli, blind and old, remained at Shiloh, 
anxiously expecting news from the camp ; 
"for his heart trembled for the ark of God;" 
and that he might be in the way of receiving 
the earliest rumours from the war, he sat 
watching by the wayside. One day he heard 
an outcry in the town, which had been occa- 
sioned by the news brought by one of the 
fugitives from the battle. This man, with 
his clothes rent and dust upon his head, 
soon came before the high-priest and gave 
to him the tidings, — that Israel fled before 
the Philistines — that there had been a great 
slaughter— that his two sons, Hophni and 
Phineas, were slain — and that the ark of 
God was taken ! No sooner had the last 
words passed the lips of the messenger, than 
the high-priest fell backward from off his 
seat ; and being old and heavy, his neck was 
broken in the fall. Soon after the news of 
all these calamities was carried to the wife 
of Phineas ; on hearing which she was taken 
with the pains of labour, and died, after 
she had looked upon the son to whom she 
gave birth, and given him the sad name of 
Ichabod [Inglorious'] ; for she said, " The 
glory is departed from Israel ; because the 
ark of Jehovah, the God of Israel, is taken." 
These incidents serve to evince the depth of 
that astonishment and grief with which the 
loss of the ark was regarded. 

The Philistines soon found that they had 
small cause to rejoice in the glorious trophy 
they had won : and most convincingly was it '< 



CHAP. IV.] 



ELI ASD 



SAMUEL. 



223 



made known to them that the Israelites had 
been defeated for the punishment of their 
sins, which rendered them unworthy of their 
God's protection, and not through His want 
of power to save. The Philistines certainly 
considered that they had taken captive the 
God of the Hebrews, and could, on the prin- 
ciples of pagan idolatry, hardly fail to attri- 
bute it to the superior power of Dagon, their 
own god. Yet they still must have had a 
very salutary dread of the God of Israel ; 
and while they could not but regard the 
ark as the proudest of their trophies, it was 
probably more with the view of propitiating 
him, by associating him with their own god, 
than by way of insult, that they deposited 
the conquered ark in the temple of their 
Dagon at Azotus. But God disdained this 
dishonouring alliance ; and twice the Phi- 
listines found their idol overthrown, and the 
second time broken to pieces, before the 
ark of God. And further to demonstrate 
His power in such a way as might in- 
clude a punishment for their idolatry and 
for the abominations connected with it, the 
Lord smote the people of the place with 
hemorrhoids, or the piles, with a mortal 
destruction. The land also swarmed with 
jerboas, whereby the products of the fields 
were consumed. Attributing these calamities 
to the presence of the ark, they sent it to 
Gath, where it remained until the pressure 
of the same inflictions compelled them to 
send it from them. It was taken to Ekron, 
another of the five -metropolitan cities of 
Philistia. The Ekronites received it with 
terror, crying, e ' They have brought about 
the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay 
us and our people." They therefore in an 
assembly of " the lords of the Philistines " 
proposed that the ark should be sent back 
to its own place in the land of Israel. This 
was determined; nor was the determination 
too soon, for already the hand of God was so 
heavy upon Ekron, that " the cry of the city 
went up to heaven." And that it might be 
sent away with all honour, the diviners, who 
were consulted as to the best means of giving 
effect to the intention which had been formed, 
counselled that five golden hemorrhoids, and 
five golden mice, one from each of the Phi- 



listine states, should be deposited in a coffer 
beside the ark, as a trespass-offering : for even 
thus early the custom had come into use of 
making votive offerings representing the in-r 
struments of affliction, or 01 the parts afflicted, 
to the god to whom the infliction or the cure 
was attributed. That they might give the 
glory to the God of Israel, and not harden 
their hearts as did the Egyptians, and thereby 
bring upon themselves the punishments of 
that people, were the reasons by which this 
course of conduct was enforced. And they 
are remarkable as showing the effect, even 
at this remote date, upon the neighbouring 
nations, of the wonders of judgment and 
deliverance which had been wrought in the 
land of Egypt. 

To testify all possible respect, the ark was 
placed in a new car, to which were yoked 
two kine, whose necks had never before been 
subjected to the yoke. Their calves were 
tied up at home ; and, by the advice of the 
priests, it was concluded to leave the cows 
free to take their own course ; — if the ani- 
mals went away from their calves to the 
land of Israel, it was to be inferred that a 
right judgment had been formed of the cause 
from which their calamities proceeded ; but 
if not, they might conclude that it had been 
the result of natural causes. From such in- 
cidents the heathen were even thus early ac- 
customed to conjecture the will of their gods. 
In this case, no sooner were the kine set 
free than they turned their backs upon their 
young, and took the road towards the town 
of Bethshemesh in Judah, being the nearest 
city of the Levites towards the Philistine 
frontier. It was the time of the wheat- 
harvest, when the people of the town were 
abroad in the valley reaping the fruits of 
their fields. They beheld the ark advancing 
with great gladness ; and when the kine j 
stopped of their own accord, near a great 
stone, in a field belonging to one Joshua, 
the Levites who were present detached them 
from the car, and offered them up in sacrifice 
upon that stone before the ark. And the 
stone being thus consecrated by sacrifice, 
the ark was removed from the car and de- 
posited thereon. The five lords of the Phi- 
listines, who had followed the car to the 



224 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



1 

[book in. 



borders of Bethshemesh (which was twelve 
miles distant from Ekron), and had stood 
witnessing these proceedings, now returned 
home, well convinced that it was the hand 
of the God of Israel by which they had been 
smitten. The ark had been in their hands 
seven months. 

The adventures of the ark, and its con- 
stant exposure to their sight, begat in the 
Bethshernites a familiarity towards it, incon- 
sistent with the respect due to Jehovah, and 
which it was highly necessary to repress. 
When therefore their familiarity went so far 
that they ventured to raise the cover of the 
ark, to gratify their curiosity with a view of 
its contents, sixty of their number — prin- 
cipal persons of the place — were smitten 
with death. On this the people cried, with 
great consternation, " Who is able to stand 
before this holy God, Jehovah ? and to whom 
shall he go up from us ? " They decided to 
invite the people of Kirjath-jeavim to take 
the ark away. They did so, and deposited it 
in the house of Abinadab "in the hill." 
This person set apart his son Eleazar to take 
charge of it— to preserve it from pollution, 
and to keep all things clean and orderly 
about it. Thus it remained about eighty- 
two years. Why it was not returned to Shiloh 
does not very clearly appear. Probably no 
command on the subject was given; and 
from the experience which the Israelites now 
had of the jealousy with which its sanctity 
was guarded, they were afraid to remove it 
without express orders. Besides, at this 
time the people were again far gone into 
idolatrous practices, which made them com- 
paratively indifferent about the ark ; and it 
is not unlikely that the reaction of the sen- 
timent of astonishment and grief with which 
its loss had been regarded, did much to im- 
pair that veneration of which it had been 
the object. Add to this that they had been 
without the ark for seven months, in the 
course of which they had accustomed their 
minds to the want of it, and had learned to 
regard it as less essential to them than it 
had before seemed. The tabernacle still 
remained at Shiloh, which continued to be 
the seat of the appointed ministrations, until 
it was removed, in the reign of Saul, to Nob, 



probably in consequence of the destruction 
of Shiloh in the Philistine war * 

For their idolatries and alienation, the 
Hebrews were punished by twenty years 
I continuance [including the seven months of 
the ark's absence] of their subjection to the 
Philistines. 

It is usually stated that Samuel succeeded 
Eli. He was then little more than twenty 
years of age; and although, as his years ad- 
vanced, he doubtless acquired much authority 
among the people from the influence of his 
character and position, there is no evidence 
that it was any other than that which pro- 
phets usually exercised. It rather appears 
from the text that it was after the twenty years 
of further servitude to the Philistines," that 
Samuel was publicly called to assume the 
civil government. 

At the end of these twenty years the 
people "lamented after the Lord," or re- 
pented of the sins by which they had 
alienated themselves from him, and were 
disposed to return to their allegiance. Sa- 
muel then came forward in his prophetic 
character, and promised them deliverance 
from the Philistines, if they would put away 
the strange gods— the Baals and Ashtaroths 
(representing the sun and moon), and devote 
themselves to the exclusive service of Je- 
hovah. His directions were followed ; and 
he then convened an assembly of all Israel 
at 3Iizpeh, where they held a solemn fast 
and humiliation for their sins, and poured 
out water before Jehovah, as expressive of 
their despondency or grief. And to testify 
their good intentions for the future, the pro- 
phet himself was there invested by them 
with the authority of a "judge." 

The Philistines took umbrage at this great 
assembly in Mizpeh, which, they rightly 
judged, boded no good to the continuance of 
their dominion. They assembled their^ forces - 
and marched to that place, to disperse the 
congregation. The people, not being pre- ' 
pared for war, were filled with alarm on the 
approach of their enemies, and besought 
Samuel to cry to Jehovah for them, that he . 
might save them from the hand of the Phi- 
listines. Samuel did so with great earnest- 

* 1 Sam. xiv. 3; Jer. vii. 12—14, xxvi. 6—9. 



CHAP. IV.] 



ELI AND SAMUEL. 



225 



ness ; and he was in the act of offering up 
a lamb as a burnt-offering, when the Philis- 
tines drew near to battle. The prayers of 
the prophet were then answered by a ter- 
rible storm of thunder and lightning, by 
which the enemy were alarmed and con- 
founded, while the Israelites, recognising the 
sign, were inspired with sudden and indo- 
mitable courage. They fell impetuously 
upon the force they had so lately dreaded, 
and slew vast numbers of them, chasing the 
remainder as far as Bethcar. In memory of 
this great victory, Samuel set up a memorial- 
stone, and gave it the name of Ebenezer 
{the help-stone), saying, " Hitherto hath Je- 
hovah helped us." 

This very brilliant victory broke the spirit 
of the Philistines for many years. They 
were obliged to restore all their conquests 
from the Israelites ; and, for many years to 
come, they kept carefully within their own 
territories, and abstained from any hostile 
acts against the Hebrews. Their example 
/■as followed by the other neighbours of 
Israel, which hence enjoyed the felicity of a 
profound peace during the entire period of 
Samuel's sole administration. 

This excellent judge administered justice 
regularly to the tribes in his annual circuit, 
which he took to the places of sacred stones 
at Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and constantly 
at his own place of abode at Ramah, where 
he built an altar to Jehovah. This was pro- 
bably by the Divine permission or direction, at 
least for the present, as God had not yet given 
any declaration where the ark was to be fixed. 

The sole administration of Samuel lasted 
twelve years, dating it, as we do, from the 
end of the Philistine servitude, and not from 
the death of Eli. Near the close of this 
period, when the prophet was growing old 
and gray-headed, being sixty-four years of 
age, he appointed his sons, Joel and Abiah, 
to act for him at Bethel and Beersheba. 
But they walked not in the steps of their 
father. " They turned aside after lucre, and 
took bribes, and perverted judgment." 

This misconduct of his sons, with his own 
advancing age, and the seemingly unsettled 
state in which the government would be left 
at his death, were among the causes which 



at this time induced the elders of Israel to 
resort to Samuel at Ramah, and to demand 
of him that a king should be appointed to 
reign over them, as in other nations. 

The causes which we have just stated, 
together with the regular administration of 
justice to which Samuel had accustomed 
them, occasioned the demand, it would seem, 
at this particular time; but there were deeper 
causes which would unquestionably have 
brought them to this point ere long, if it had 
not now. These causes have been well dis- 
criminated by Jahn. 

This able writer justly refers the frequent 
interruptions to the welfare of the Hebrew 
state under the judges to—" 1. The effemi- 
nacy and cowardice of the people ; and, 2. 
To the disunion and jealousy of the tribes, 
who never assisted each other with the re- 
quisite zeal and alacrity. But as this effemi- 
nacy arose from the vices of idolatry, and 
their cowardice from a want of confidence in 
Jehovah; so the disunion and jealousy of the 
tribes, though selfishness was the immediate 
cause, arose from a disposition to neglect 
their Divine King, and not to consider them- 
selves as the united and only people of 
Jehovah. This disposition, if it did not 
originate from, was at least very much 
heightened by, the multiplication of deities. 
Thus both these causes of their misfortunes 
owed their origin to idolatry, that great 
cause of all their calamities, so often men- 
tioned in the sanctions of the law. Thus 
the people, by increasing their gods, ener- 
vated themselves, and prepared for them- 
selves those sufferings and chastisements by 
which they were again to be brought back 
to their King, Jehovah." 

He proceeds to observe that " These causes 
of national misfortune were all in operation 
at the time of Samuel, and threatened to 
produce after his death still greater cala- 
mities. The tribes beyond the Jordan had 
formidable enemies in the Ammonites and 
the southern tribes in the Philistines, while 
the northern tribes stood aloof from the 
dangers of their more exposed countrymen. 
The latter seems to have been the principal 
reason why the rulers in general assembly 
requested a king. The tribes in southern 



226 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOCK III. 



Palestine and beyond the Jordan were the 
most earnest for this change in the govern- 
ment ; they feared that the death of Samuel 
would leave them without a supreme magis- 
trate, and that the nation being again dis- 
united, they should be left to their fate. 
The degeneracy of Samuel's sons, who had 
been appointed subordinate judges, or de- 
puties, increased their apprehensions. They, 
therefore, strenuously insisted on their de- 
mand, " Nay, but we will have a king over 
us, that we also may be like all the nations." 
They had reason to hope that a king invested 
with supreme authority might be able to 
unite the power of the whole nation and 
protect each tribe with the collected strength 
of all ; that under him the affairs of govern- 
ment would be more promptly administered 
and necessary aid more readily afforded ; 
that if he were a man devoted to Jehovah, 
he could more effectually repress or prevent 
idolatry, and thus place the welfare of the 
state on a more solid foundation. They 
might imagine themselves justified in this 
request as Moses had taken it for granted 
that the nation would eventually have a 
king, and the same thing had been promised 
to their great progenitor Abraham. It con- 
duces greatly to the honour of the Hebrews 
that they attempted this change in their con- 
stitution, not by their own power, but in 
accordance with the principles of the theo- 
cracy ; they requested it of their King, Je- 
hovah, by the intervention of a prophet, and 
they effected it without bloodshed — a mani- 
fest proof that the time of the judges was 
neither what is usually understood by a 
'barbarous ' nor a 'heroic age.' " 

But as all the objects which they desired 
to realise were attainable under the theo- 
cracy, were they but faithful to its principles 
and engagements; and as the unseen King, 
Jehovah, would necessarily be obscured by a 
subordinate, visible monarch, He, by means 
of Samuel, gave the rulers to understand his 
disapprobation of their request ; and at the 
same time represented to them the burdens 
they would hr>ve to bear under a king, espe- 
cially how easily he might be led to imitate 
other oriental monarchs, and to disregard 
the law of Jehovah. 



The picture which was then drawn by 
Samuel exhibits in a lively manner the cha- 
racter of the monarchies which at that time 
existed in the east, and enables us to ascer- 
tain that, whatever changes may have taken 
place in particular states, the monarchical 
principle as it then existed has been pre- 
served to this day in its full vigour in the 
east. This is so true, that there is no royal 
usage mentioned by Samuel which may not 
be illustrated and explained from the modern 
sovereignties of that part of the world. The 
statement must have seemed the more effec- 
tive from the implied contrast to the mild 
and gentle character of that service which 
the Lord, as king of Israel, had required. 
Samuel reminded them that their kings 
would soon fall into the state of other 
monarchs, to support which the heaviest 
exactions upon their persons and estates 
would become necessary. He would take 
their young men and employ them as cha- 
rioteers and horsemen, and even (according 
to the Egyptian custom) as runners before 
and about his chariot. A standing army 
would deprive them of the valuable services 
of their young men ; and if this were not 
enough, the king of a future day would 
"set them to ear his ground, and to reap his 
harvests, and to make his instruments of war, 
and instruments of his chariots. In like 
manner the daughters of Israel, who should 
marry and bring up children, would be 
largely taken to minister to the luxury of 
the court as confectioners and bakers. Nor 
would he much scruple to take the chosen 
and best of their male and female slaves, as 
well as their labouring cattle, and "put 
them to his work." And then to support his 
expenses, the heaviest exactions would be 
necessary; and although the kingly tenth 
were already appropriated to Jehovah, the 
Divine King, not the less would their human 
king exact his kingly dues; thus, in fact, 
rendering their burdens greater than those 
of any other nation. A clear intimation was 
also given them of the danger to which their 
landed possessions would be ultimately ex- 
posed under the form of government which 
they so much desired. For the expression, 
" He will take your fields, and your vine- 



CHAP. IV.] 



ELI AND 



SAMUEL. 



227 



yards, and your olive-yards, even the best of 
them, and give them to his servants," mani- 
festly refers to the fact that inasmuch as 
their true King, Jehovah, was the sovereign 
proprietor of the soil, and as such had long 
before distributed the whole in inalienable 
estates among the people ; whatever human 
king they might have, would necessarily 
stand in the, then and there, peculiar posi- 
tion, of being only a civil governor, and not, 
like the neighbouring king, also the terri- 
torial sovereign; and that hence, wanting 
the means of providing for his family and 
servants which other kings possessed, he 
would be tempted to avail himself of all 
kinds of pretences to dispossess them of the 
lands which they held from their Divine 
King. " Ye shall be his servants," concludes 
the prophet. " And ye shall cry out in that 
day because of your king which ye shall 
have chosen you: and Jehovah will not 
hear you in that day." 

The purpose of the people was, however, 
too firmly fixed to be shaken even by this 
discouraging representation. An acqui- 
escence in their demand was therefore re- 
luctantly conceded, probably, as Jahn con- 
jectures, " Because the desired change was 
requested of the invisible King in a lawful 
manner, through the mediation of his pro- 
phet, and because, in the present disposition 
of the nation, it might be effected without 
bloodshed. If the remark of Polybius be in 
all cases true, that ' all aristocracies and de- 
mocracies terminate at last in monarchy,'* 
this change must have taken place in some 
future time, and perhaps might have been 
attended with civil war. 

" By this alteration of the constitution 
the theocracy was indeed thrown somewhat 
into the shade, as it was no longer so mani- 
fest that God was the king of the Hebrews. 
Still, however, as the principles of the theo- 
cracy were interwoven with the fundamental 
and unchangeable laws of the state, their 
influence did not entirely cease, but the 
elected king was to act as the viceroy and 
vassal of Jehovah. On this account Moses 
had already established the following regu- 
lations t : — 

* Hist. lib. v. 6, 7. t Deut. xvii. 14—20. 



" 1. That the Hebrews, whenever they 
adopted the monarchical form of govern- 
ment, should raise only those to the throne, 
who were chosen by Jehovah himself. As 
monarchs (called kings of kings) were accus- 
tomed to appoint sub-kings, or viceroys, in 
the several provinces of their dominions, so 
was the king of the Hebrews to be called to 
the throne by Jehovah, to receive the king- 
dom from him, and in all respects to con- 
sider himself as his representative, viceroy, 
and vassal. On this occasion the will of 
Jehovah was to be made known by a pro- 
phet, or by means of Urim and Thummim, 
and the viceroy elect was to prove himself 
an instrument of God by protecting the 
commonwealth against its foes. The suc- 
cession of the royal house was to depend on 
the will of God, to be made known by his 
prophets. 

" 2. Moses had likewise ordained that the 
new king should be a native Israelite. Thus 
foreigners were excluded from the throne, 
even though they should be proposed by 
false prophets ; for, being heathens, they 
might transgress the fundamental law of the 
state by the introduction of idolatry ; or, at 
least, it might be difficult for them to rule 
in all respects as the vassals of Jehovah. 
This regulation had reference merely to free 
elections, and was by no means to be under- 
stood, as it was explained by Judas of Ga- 
lilee J and the Zealots during the last war 
with the Romans, that the Hebrews were 
not to submit to these foreign powers, under 
whose dominion they were brought by an 
all-directing Providence. On the contrary, 
Moses himself had predicted such events, 
and Jeremiah and Ezekiel earnestly exhorted 
their countrymen to surrender quietly to the 
Chaldeans." § 

Upon such conditions the choice of a king 
was permitted, according to law ; and in the 
year 1110 B.C., 538 years after the exode, 
the first election took place. 

Saul, the son of Kish, of the tribe of Ben- 

% Acts v. 37- 

§ Tn the preceding paragraphs, all the passages marked 
as quotations are from Jahn, book iii. sect. 23, book iv. 

sects. 24, 25. 



228 



THE BIB*LE HISTORY. 



[book III. 



jamin, went forth about this time with a 
servant to seek some strayed asses belonging 
to his father. For three days the search was 
fruitless ; and then finding himself near 
Ramah, the stated residence of Samuel, he 
resolved to go and consult him ; for it was 
known to all Israel that nothing was hidden 
from the man of God. According to the 
still subsisting custom of the east, no one 
could, with the least propriety, present him- 
self before a man in authority, and still less 
before a person of so sacred a character as 
Samuel bore, without some present, however 
small, in token of his respect and homage. 
But although the toil and travel-stained 
stranger who appeared before the prophet 
could only lay before him the worth of seven- 
pence halfpenny in silver, he was received 
with particular notice and honour; for it 
had been specially revealed to Samuel that 
on that day and at that hour the destined 
king of Israel would present himself before 
him. The prophet assured Saul that his 
father had found the asses, and began now 
to be anxious about his son. Nevertheless, 
he urged him to stay with him over the 
night, and partake of a feast which he had 
provided ; at the same time conveying to 
him a slight intimation of the splendid for- 
tunes which were in store for him ; to which, 
with modest self-withdrawment, Saul re- 
plied, " Am not I a Benjamite, of the 
smallest of the tribes of Israel 1 and my 
family the least of all the families of the 
tribe of Benjamin? Wherefore then speakest 
thou so to me?" Part of this must be at- 
tributed to the oriental forms of self-detrac- 
tion; for although Benjamin was certainly 
the smallest of the tribes — as it had not 
recovered the serious blow inflicted by all 
the other tribes — it appears from the history 
that the family of Kish was of some con- 
sideration in Benjamin. 

In consequence of the intimation he had 
previously received, Samuel had against this 
time prepared an entertainment, to which 
thirty principal persons of the place had 
been invited. Samuel conducted the stranger 
to the room in which these guests were 
assembled, and led him to the corner-seat 
of honour; and when the meat was served, 



directed the most honourable joint — the 
shoulder — to be set before him. 

Being summer, the bed for Saul was made 
on the house-top; and before he lay down, 
Samuel communed with him there, probably 
to ascertain his sentiments and character, 
and to acquaint him with the true nature of 
that form of kingly government which he 
was destined to establish. Early in the 
morning the prophet called Saul to depart, 
and walked forth with him. After a time 
Samuel directed the servant to pass on be- 
fore ; and then the prophet, desiring Saul to 
stand still that he might show him the pur- 
poses of God, produced a vial of oil, and 
poured it upon his head, thus anointing him 
" captain over the Lord's inheritance." He 
then kissed him, and to confirm his faith, 
proceeded to tell him all the incidents that 
would occur to him during his journey home, 
and to encourage him, under the sense he 
entertained of his own inferior claims to 
such a distinction, assured him that on the 
way, and through the Divine influence, the 
needful qualifications should grow upon him, 
so that he should seem to receive another* 
heart and to become another man. 

On his way home all happened to Saul 
which the prophet had foreshown ; and some 
of the incidents are too illustrative of the 
manners of the time to pass unnoticed. In 
the plain of Tabor he was met by three men 
who were proceeding to the place of sacred 
stones in Bethel, to worship God there. One 
of them carried three kids, intended as a 
sacrifice for each of their number; another 
had three loaves of bread ; and the third a 
leather bottle of wine, all evidently intended 
to be used with the flesh of the kids in an 
offering-feast. They gave Saul the saluta- 
tion of peace — such as travellers give each 
other by the way — probably the usual 
" Peace be unto thee ! " which is no other 
than the common Salam aleikoom of the 
modern east ; and they gave him two of the 
three loaves of bread which they had with 
them. 

As Saul went on to Gibeah in Benjamin, 

* Another, not new; a distinction which, from the Scrip- 
tural acceptation of the word new, together with the after 
conduct of Saul, it may be important to note. 



CHAP. IV.] 



ELI AND 



SAMUEL. 



229 



which seems to have been called " the hill 
of God," either because there was here a 
" high-place " consecrated to the worship of 
God, or because it was the seat of a " school 
of the prophets," or a kind of college where 
young men were instructed in the duties of 
religion, in the knowledge of the law, in 
psalmody and other religious exercises. Or 
it may have been so called for both these 
reasons, for both existed. As Saul drew 
nigh he perceived a company of these pro- 
phets returning from the high-place, w r here 
they had been to worship ; and as they went 
they sang the praises of God to the sound of 
the psaltery, the tabret, the pipe, and the 
harp. As they drew nigh, the spirit of God 
came upon him, as Samuel had predicted, 
and he became as another man. He joined 
the prophets, and sang the praises of God 
with them. And when those to whom he 
was known (for this was in his own tribe and 
neighbourhood) witnessed this sudden en- 
dowment of the untaught husbandman, they 
were much astonished, and said one to 
another, " What is this that is come unto 
the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the 
prophets 1 " Whence this last expression 
passed into a proverb, applied to one found 
in society with which his previous habits 
had not prepared him to mingle. It may be 
seen, however, that this incident would serve 
in a very conspicuous manner to direct 
attention to the person and character of 
Saul. 

Samuel, in parting from Saul, had ap- 
pointed a future meeting at Gilgal, to which 
place of sacred stones he convoked all Israel 
for the election of a king. As on other occa- 
sions, the choice of God was to be manifested 
by lot, which would also tend to prevent 
jealousies and the suspicion of partiality on 
the part of Samuel. In the usual manner 
of successive indications, the tribe of Ben- 
jamin was taken by the lot from the several 
tribes; then the family of Matri from the 
families of that tribe ; then the house of 
Kish from the family of Matri ; and, lastly, 
Saul from the household of Kish. But Saul 
! was not to be found. Well assured of the 
| result, he had not formed one in the as- 
'■■ sembly, but had, frlm modesty, kept himself 



apart among the baggage. When his retreat 
was discovered, he was led forward into the 
midst of the congregation ; and the mass of 
the people observed with complacency that 
the elected king was of most noble presence, 
in the full prime of life, comely and tall, 
being higher by the head and shoulders than 
any of those among whom he stood. On such a 
man, in a rude age, when personal qualities 
are the most valued, the suffrages of all men 
would have centred, regarding him as pointed 
out by nature for rule and dominion. And 
so far did this feeling operate even on Sa- 
muel, that with evident pride that, since 
there must be a king, the divine choice had 
fallen on one who must seem in the eyes of 
all men so well qualified to dignify his high 
office, he thus proclaimed him to the people, 
" See ye him whom Jehovah hath chosen, 
that there is none like him among all the 
people.''' And the people, responding to that 
feeling, raised at once the shout of recog- 
nition, " Long live the king ! " 

In concluding the present Book, we are 
reluctant to withhold from the reader the 
very interesting survey which Jahn has 
taken of the office of the judges, and of the 
condition of Israel under their administra- 
tion. This survey is embodied in the ensu- 
ing paragraphs, but having modified several 
passages to suit them to the views which we 
have ourselves developed, we abstain from 
giving them the form of a direct quotation. 

From what has been already said respect- 
ing the judges and their achievements, we 
can ascertain, with a tolerable degree of cer- 
tainty, the nature of their office. Most of 
them indeed had been at the head of armies, 
and delivered their country from foreign 
oppression: Eli and Samuel, however, were 
not military men. Deborah was judge before 
she planned the war against Jabin; and of 
Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, it is at least 
uncertain whether they ever held any mili- 
tary command. Judges are mentioned in 
the Mosaic law, in connection with the high- 
priest, as arbiters of civil controversies, 
without any allusion to war*. In like man- 
ner, the judges who were appointed over 

* Dent. xvii. 9. 



230 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK III. 



Tyre after king Baal were certainly not 
military officers, for the city was at that 
time time tributary to Babylon. The com- 
mand of the army can therefore be scarcely 
considered as the peculiar distinction of 
these magistrates. But as in ancient times 
the duties of a judge were reckoned among 
the first and most important duties of a 
ruler, so the Hebrew judges appear to have 
been appointed for the general administration 
of public affairs, and the command of the 
army fell to them as the supreme executive 
officers. In many cases, it is true, military 
achievements were the means whereby men 
elevated themselves to the rank of judges : 
but our inquiry is, not how the office was 
obtained, but for what purposes it was in- 
stituted. It may, however, be proper to 
recollect that Jephthah and Samuel, and, 
for aught that appears, Jair, Elon, Ibzan, 
and Abdon, were raised to this office by the 
free unsolicited voice of the people. 

The office of these judges or regents was 
held during life, but it was not hereditary, 
neither could they appoint their successors. 
This arrangement might seem to be attended 
witn the disadvantage that at the death of a 
judge the supreme executive authority 
ceased ; but on consideration it will appear 
that these civil functions devolved on the 
high-priest, or rather were inherent to his 
high office, and were called into operation in 
the absence of any person more especially 
appointed to exercise them. And, without 
this, the apparent disadvantage would be 
more than counterbalanced by its preventing 
a degenerate heir or successor from giving to 
idolatry the support of his influence. This 
authority was limited by the law alone; and 
in doubtful cases they were directed by the 
sacred Oracle*. They were not obliged in 
common cases to ask advice of the ordinary 
rulers; it was sufficient that they did not 
remonstrate against the measures of the 
judge. In important emergencies, however, 
they convoked a general assembly of the 
rulers, over which they presided and exerted 
a powerful influence. They could issue 
orders, but not enact laws ; they could 
neither levy taxes nor appoint officers, ex- 

* Num. xxvii. 21. 



cept perhaps in the army. Their authority 
extended only over those tribes by whom 
they had been elected or acknowledged ; for, 
as has been before remarked, several of the 
judges presided over separate tribes. There 
was no salary attached to their office, nor 
was there any income appropriated to them, 
unless it might be a larger share of the 
spoils, and those presents which were made 
to them as testimonials of respect t. They 
had no external marks of dignity, and main- 
tained no retinue of courtiers, though some 
of them were very opulent. They were not 
only simple in their manners, moderate in 
their desires, and free from avarice and am- 
bition, but noble and magnanimous men, 
who felt that whatever they did for their 
country was above all reward, and could not 
be recompensed ; who desired merely to pro- 
mote the public good, and chose rather to 
deserve well of their country than to be 
enriched by its wealth. This exalted pa- 
triotism, like everything else connected with 
politics in the theocratical state of the 
Hebrews, was partly of a religious character ; 
and those regents always conducted them- 
selves as the officers of God; in all their 
enterprises they relied upon him, and their 
only care was that their countrymen should 
acknowledge the authority of Jehovah, their 
invisible King J. Still they were not without 
faults, neither are they so represented by 
their historians ; they relate, on the con- 
trary, with the utmost frankness, the great 
sins of which some of them were guilty. 
They were not merely deliverers of the state 
from a foreign yoke, but destroyers of 
idolatry, foes of pagan vices, promoters of 
the knowledge of God, of religion, and of 
morality ; restorers of theocracy in the minds 
of the Hebrews, and powerful instruments of 
Divine Providence in the promotion of the 
great design of preserving the Hebrew con- 
stitution, and by that means of rescuing the 
true religion from destruction. 

By comparing the periods during which 
the Hebrews were oppressed by their enemies 
with those in which they were independent 
and governed by their own constitution, it is 

t Judges viii. 24. 

i Judg. viii. 22, etseq.; comp. Heb. xi. 



ELI AND SAMUEL. 



231 



apparent that the nation in general experi- 
enced much more prosperity than adversity 
in the time of the judges: their dominion 
continued 472 years ; but the whole period 
of foreign oppression amounts only to "131 
years, scarcely a one-fourth part of that 
period. Even during these years of bond- 
age, the whole nation was seldom under the 
yoke at the same time, but, for the most 
part, separate tribes only were held in ser- 
vitude; nor were their oppressions always 
very severe; and all the calamities termi- 
nated in the advantage and glory of the 
people, as soon as they abolished idolatry 
and returned to their King, Jehovah. Neither 
was the nation in such a state of anarchy at 
this time as has generally been supposed. 
There were regular judicial tribunals at 
which justice could be obtained; and when 
there was no supreme regent, the public 
welfare was provided for by the high-priest 
and the ordinary rulers of the tribes*. 
These rulers, it is true, were jealous of each 
other, and their jealousies not unfrequently 
broke out into civil war; but the union of 
the state was never entirely destroyed. They 
were not always provided with armsf; but 
yet, when united under their King, Jehovah, 
they gained splendid victories. They were 
not sufficiently careful to repress idolatry, 
but they never suffered it to become univer- 
sally predominant. The sacred tabernacle 
was never entirely deserted and shut up, nor 
was it ever polluted by the rites of heathen 
superstition. 

These times would certainly not be con- 

* Ruth iv. I— 11; Judges vii;. 22, xi. 1—11; 1 Sam. iv. 
!, viL 1, 2. 
t 2 Judg. v. 3; 1 Sam 10. 



sidered so turbulent as barbarous, much less 
would they be taken, contrary to the clearest 
evidence and to the analogy of all history, 
for a ' heroic age,' % if they were viewed 
without the prejudices of pre-conceived . 
hypothesis. It must never be forgotten that 
the Book of - Judges is by no means a com- 
plete history. It is, in a manner, a mere 
register of diseases, from which, however, we 
have no right to conclude that there were 
no healthy men, much less that there were 
no healthy seasons ; when the book itself, 
for the most part, mentions only a few tribes 
in which the epidemic prevailed, and notices 
long periods during which it had entirely 
ceased. Whatever may be the result of more 
accurate investigation, it remains undeniable 
that the history of the Hebrews during this 
period, perfectly corresponds throughout to 
the sanctions of the law ; and they were 
always prosperous when they complied with 
the conditions on which prosperity was pro- 
mised to them; it remains undeniable that 
the government of God was clearly mani- 
fested, not only to the Hebrews, but to their 
heathen neighbours, that the fulfilling of the 
promises and threatenings of the law were 
so many sensible proofs of the universal 
dominion of the Divine King of the He- 
brews ; and, consequently, that all the 
various fortunes of that nation were so 
many means of preserving the knowledge of 
God on the earth. The Hebrews had no suf- 
ficient reason to desire a change in their 
constitution, since all that was necessary 
was that they should observe the conditions 
on which national prosperity had been pro- 
mised to them. 
% It is thus characterized by Heeren and other writers. 



232 THE BIBLE HISTORY. [BOOK IV. 



BOOK IV. 
THE KINGDOM. 



CHAPTER I. 
SAUL. 



i It is very important to notice that the elec- 
tion of Saul was by no means unconditional, 
or to such unrestricted regal power as is 
usually exercised in the east. In fact the 
Hebrew monarchy, as now established, is, we 
believe, the only example which the history 
of the east can offer of a limited constitu- 
tional government. Such of these limitations 
as necessarily resulted from the peculiar 
position of the king, as the regent or vice- 
gerent of a spiritual and Almighty King, 
have already been pointed out. But besides 
these, there were other conditions not so 
necessarily resulting from this position, but 
judged essential to the welfare of the state 
and to the objects of its institutidn. And 
these were specially and formally guaranteed ; 
and, together with the others, unquestion- 
ably formed what, in the language of modern 
politics, would be called "the constitution" 
of the Hebrew monarchy. We are told that 
after the people had accepted, with acclama- 
tions, the king on whom the lot had fallen, 
Samuel " told the people the manner of the 
kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it 
up before Jehovah." It was thus deposited 
in the keeping of the priests, that it might 
be preserved safely, and that it might be at 
all times seen whether the king observed 
the conditions on which the crown had been 
offered to him and accepted by him. Here, 
then, we have not only a constitution, but a 
written charter. We do not indeed know 
what powers it conferred upon the king, or 
what restraints it imposed upon his will; 
we only know that his authority was far less 
absolute than that of other ancient oriental 
kings. It may, indeed, without difficulty be 
concluded, that they were conformable to 



those principles of subserviency to the 
theocracy, which have already been explained, 
as well as to those foundations for a limited 
monarchy which had long before been laid 
by Moses, who was enabled to foresee and 
provide for the exigency which now occurred. 

1. It was thus, by the fundamental law of 
the commonwealth, forbidden that the king 
should introduce any new mode of religious 
worship ; neither could he, like the kings of 
other nations, perform the functions of a 
priest, unless entitled to do so, independently 
of his regal office, as one of the family of 
Aaron, which was the case with the Asmonean 
princes. On the contrary, he was bound to 
rule as the representative and vassal of 
Jehovah; to promote the institutions of 
religion as a matter of obedience to Him ; to 
suppress idolatry as rebellion against Him ; 
to attend to the declarations of the prophets 
as his ambassadors, and faithfully to observe 
the laws of Moses*. On this account it was 
required that the king should make a tran- 
script of the law from the copy of the 
priests, and " read therein all the days of 
his life, that he might learn to fear Jehovah 
his God, to keep all the words of the law . . . 
that his heart might not be lifted up above 
his brethren," that is, that he should be no 
arbitrary despot, making his own will or 
pleasure the rule of his conduct t. 

2. When we find subjoined to this injunc- 
tion, as the consequence of obedience to it, 
" to the end that he may prolong his days 
in his kingdom, he and his children, in the 
midst of Israel," we infer that it was intended 
that the kingdom should be hereditary, but 
yet so that it might be transferred from one 

* 1 Sam. xv. 1—20. f Deut. xvii. 14—20. 



CHAP. I.] 



SAtTL. 



233 



family to another by the will of Jehovah 
and the wishes of the people. In this 
manner it actually did pass from the line of 
Saul to that of David, and in the kingdom 
of Israel the change was very frequent. 

3. The king was forbidden to imitate the 
pernicious luxury of other oriental monarchs. 
He was not allowed to hoard up large trea- 
sures, lest the circulation of money should 
be obstructed, industry discouraged, or his 
subjects impoverished; neither was he per- 
mitted to keep a numerous harem, lest (not 
to mention other disadvantages) he should 
be alienated from God by his women, many 
of whom would probably be foreigners. 

4. As cavalry could be of little use in the 
mountainous regions of Palestine, and as the 
king of the Hebrews was never to become a 
conqueror of foreign lands, or a universal 
monarch, he was forbidden to maintain large 
bodies of cavalry. So much reliance was 
also placed in those times upon horses, and 
so much pride taken in them, that the pos- 
session of a body of cavalry was calculated 
to interfere with that simple reliance upon 
the power of Jehovah, which the Hebrews 
were still required to exercise in such mili- 
tary undertakings as might obtain his 
sanction; and none unsanctioned by Him 
were lawful. 

The election of Saul, though generally 
approved, did not meet with universal 
acceptance. In one point of view, the choice 
of a person belonging to a neutral and 
powerless tribe was calculated to obviate the 
rivalries of the two great tribes of Ephraim 
and Judah, who probably both thought that 
they had the better right to the distinction, 
but neither of whom were likely to agree 
that the other should have had it. But, on 
the other hand, Saul himself was not likely 
to derive the more respect from this neutral 
and politically insignificant position which 
prevented the mutual jealousies of these 
great rivals. But seeing that the tribe of 
Benjamin was, from its geographical position, 
closely connected with, and in some degree 
dependent on that of Judah, it is more pro- 
bable that the dissentients, " the children of 
Belial," who despised Saul, and said, " How 
shall this man save us ? " were of the haughty 



and turbulent tribe of Ephraim. Samuel 
left it to the people themselves to settle the 
money price they were to pay for their new 
luxury ; and, although he had foreshown the 
exactions which the regal state would in the 
end render necessary, it was not his object 
to give his sanction to that which he had 
announced as a contingent evil. Besides, 
the external organisation of the new govern- 
ment was left to be developed by circum- 
stances, the prophet having only cared to 
secure the principles. Saul was left to grow 
into his position and its privileges, while 
Samuel continued to administer the civil 
government: for it is to be borne in mind 
that Samuel continued to judge Israel all 
the days of his life, which did not terminate 
until thirty-eight years after the election of 
Saul, who himself outlived the prophet but 
two years. The position of Saul was, there- 
fore, for the greater part of his reign, chiefly 
that of a military leader, while Samuel con- 
tinued to discharge the civil part of the 
regal office, to which it was probably obvious 
that Saul was not competent. The kingdom, 
properly speaking, was not established, not 
developed under Saul, but only begun with 
him. And this it is necessary to understand, 
if we would clearly apprehend the growth of 
that monarchical principle which was only 
planted with Saul. 

After his election at Gilgal, the king 
returned to his own home at Gibeah, where 
such "presents" were brought him by the 
people as oriental kings usually receive, and 
which form no inconsiderable portion of 
their ordinary revenue. As the product of 
these offerings was probably more than ade- 
quate to the present wants and expectations 
of the king, who as yet assumed no regal 
state, the question as to the permanent sup- 
port of the kingly government was not yet 
pressed upon the attention of either the 
people or the king. The discontented par- 
ties, however, " brought him no presents." 
Saul took no notice of their insults, but 
wisely " held his peace." 

Yery soon after Saul's election, the Am- 
monites, under their king Nahash, marched 
into the old disputed territory beyond 
J ordan, and laid siege to the important city 



234 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



of Jabesh Gilead. The inhabitants, avowing 
their impotence, offered to submit to the 
condition of paying tribute to the Ammon- 
ites; but the insulting and barbarous king 
refused to receive their submission on any 
other terms than that the right eye of every 
one of them should be extinguished, that 
they might remain as so many living monu- 
ments of his victory. Here again was a 
barbarity of which the Israelites were never 
guilty, even in thought. The people of 
Jabesh Gilead were so distressed that they 
dared not absolutely refuse even these mer- 
ciless conditions, but besought a grace of 
seven days for deliberation. This they did 
with the hope that the tribes on the other 
side the river might, in the interval, be 
roused by the news to appear for their 
deliverance. Nor was their hope in vain. 
Saul no sooner received the intelligence than 
he at once and decidedly stood up in his 
position of a hero and a king, claiming the 
obedience of the people, whom he summoned 
to follow him to the deliverance of J abesh 
Gilead. This call was readily obeyed; for 
it ran in the names of Saul and Samuel, and 
was conveyed in that imperative and com- 
pulsory form, which it was not, under any 
circumstances, judged safe to disobey*. For 
he hewed a yoke of oxen in pieces, and sent 
the pieces by the hands of swift messengers 
to all Israel, calling them, by all the penal- 
ties of that well-known and dreaded sign, to 
follow him. All Israel obeyed with one 
consent. All the men, of age to bear arms, 
quitted their several labours, and hastened 
from all parts to the plain of Bezek, where 
Saul numbering his army, found it to con- 
sist of 330,000 men, of whom 30,000 were of 
Judah, which seems rather an inadequate 
proportion for so large a tribe. It being 
already the sixth day, Saul sent to apprise 
the citizens of Jabesh Gilead of the help 
which was preparing for them, and which 
they might expect to receive on the morrow, 
being the very day they were to surrender 
their eyes to the Ammonites. 

Accordingly, in the morning, the king, 
having marched all night, appeared before 
Jabesh, at the head of his army, invested 

* See before, p. 195. 



the camp of the Ammonites, and falling 
upon them on three different sides, overthrew 
them with a great slaughter. So complete 
was the rout, that those who escaped were 
so broken and dispersed that no two could 
be found together. 

Saul in this action displayed a large 
measure of those heroic qualities which the 
ancient nations most desired their monarchs 
to possess. Considering all the circumstances, 
the promptitude and energy of his decision, 
the speed with which he collected an 
immense army and brought it into action, 
and the skill and good military conduct of 
the whole transaction, there are probably 
few operations of the Hebrew history which 
more recommend themselves to the respect 
and admiration of a modern soldier. Its 
effect was not lost upon the people, who 
joyfully recognised in their king the quali- 
ties which have generally been held most 
worthy of rule; and so much was their 
enthusiasm excited, that they began to talk 
of putting to death the small minority who 
had refused to recognise his sovereignty. 
But Samuel interposed to prevent an act 
unbecoming a day in which " the Lord had 
wrought salvation in Israel." So harsh a 
proceeding would also have been rather 
likely to provoke than allay the disaffection 
of the leading tribes. 

Samuel then invited the army, which 
comprehended in fact the effective body of 
the Hebrew people, to proceed to Gilgal, 
there solemnly to confirm the kingdom to 
Saul, seeing that now his claims were undis- 
puted by any portion of the people. This 
was done with great solemnity, and with 
abundant sacrifices of peace and joy. 

But lest this solemnity, which was obviously 
designed to remind the people of their con- 
tinued dependence on Jehovah, should be 
construed into an approbation and sanction 
of all their proceedings, the prophet took 
this public occasion of reminding them that 
their proceeding had been most unpleasing 
to their Divine King ; although, if they 
maintained their fidelity to him and to the i 
principles of the theocracy, some of the evil 
consequences might be averted. He also 
neglected not the opportunity of justifying ; 



CHAP. I.] 



SATTL. 



235 



j his own conduct and the purity of his admi- 
! nistration. He challenged assembled Israel 
to produce one instance of oppression, fraud, 
or corruption on his part, while he had been 
their sole judge ; and in that vast multitude 
j not one voice was raised to impugn his 
integrity and uprightness. He then pro- 
ceeded to remind them of their past trans- 
gressions, in forgetting or turning astray 
from their God, with the punishments which 
had invariably followed, and the deliverances 
which their repentance had procured ; show- 
ing them, by these instances, the sufficiency 
of their Divine Sovereign to rule them, and 
to save them from their enemies, without the 
intervention of an earthly king, whom they 
had persisted in demanding. And he assured 
them that, under their regal government, 
public sins would not cease to be visited 
with public calamities. To add the greater 
weight to his words, and to evince the Divine 
displeasure, the commissioned prophet called 
down thunder and rain from heaven, then at 
the usual season of wheat harvest, when the 
air is usually, in that country, serene and 
cloudless. On this the people were greatly 
alarmed at the possible consequences of the 
displeasure they had provoked, and besought 
Samuel to intercede for them. The prophet 
kindly encouraged them to hope that if they 
continued to trust faithfully in God, all 
would yet be well ; and he assured them of 
continued intercession on their behalf, and 
of his services as a civil judge or teacher, — 
for that the omission would be a sin on his 
own part. 

Saul, now fully established as king, dis- 
missed his numerous army ; but he retained 
3000 of their number, 2000 of which he 
stationed at Michmash and Bethel, under 
his own immediate orders, while the other 
thousand were at Gibeah of Benjamin, under 
his eldest son Jonathan. Josephus says that 
these formed the body-guard of himself and 
his son. If so, he began very soon to act 
" like the kings of the nations," and to fulfil 
one part of the predictions of Samuel as to 
the course which the kingdom was likely to 
take. Even supposing (as we rather do) 
that he retained this force to be in readiness 
for the smaller military operations which he 



had in view, it is evident that he had already 
taken the idea of a standing army, the 
nucleus of which this body of 3000 men may 
be deemed to have formed. At all events, it 
may seem as an early indication of Saul's 
subsequently besetting public sin, of forget- 
ting his properly vice-regal character, and 
his subordination to the Divine King. It 
was assuredly a new thing in Israel, and 
does savour somewhat of a distrust of God's 
providence, by which the peculiar people 
had hitherto been protected and delivered in 
every time of need ; as well as of an affecta- 
tion of that independent authority which 
" the kings of the nations" took to them- 
selves. However, as the character of Saul 
seems to be held generally in more disesteem 
than the writers of his history intended, we 
shall not impute blame to him where the 
Scripture does not ; but are ready to allow 
that, under all the circumstances, the mea- 
sure was prudent and proper ; for it appears 
that an enemy was then actually present in 
the country, whose expulsion the king had 
then in view. There were garrisons of the 
Philistines in the land. How this came to 
pass is not very clear. It would seem, how- 
ever, that in resigning their conquests after 
their last defeat, they had retained some hill 
fortresses, from which they knew the Hebrews 
would find it difficult to dislodge them ; and 
that when they recovered from the blow 
which was then inflicted upon their power, 
they contrived, by the help of this hold 
which they had in the country, to bring the 
southern tribes (at least those of Judah and 
Benjamin) under a sort of subjection. Thus 
when Saul was returning home after having 
been privately anointed by Samuel at Ramah, 
and met the sons of the prophets at Gibeah, 
we learn that at that place was " a garrison 
of the Philistines." And now we further 
learn that the Hebrews had in fact been 
disarmed by that people. According to that 
jealous policy of which other examples will 
ultimately be offered, they had even removed 
all the smiths of Israel, lest they should 
make weapons of war; in consequence of 
which the Hebrews were obliged to resort to 
the Philistines whenever their agricultural 
implements needed any other sharpening 



236 



TIIE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



than that which a grindstone could give; 
and as this was an unpleasant alternative, 
even these important instruments had been 
suffered to become blunt at the time to 
which we are now come; and so strict had 
been the deprivation of arms that, in the 
military operations which soon after followed, 
no one of the Israelites, save Saul and his 
eldest son, was possessed of a spear or sword. 

This was the state of southern Palestine, 
where Jonathan, acting doubtless by the 
orders of his father, attacked and overcame 
with his thousand men the Philistine garrison 
in Gibeah. Encouraged by this success, Saul 
caused open war to be proclaimed, by sound 
of trumpet, against the Philistines, and to 
assert his authority over the tribes beyond 
Jordan, who were but too apt to regard their 
interests as separate from those of the other 
tribes, and who might think themselves 
exempt from taking part in a war against a 
people whose oppressions had not extended 
to themselves, — Saul directed the proclama- 
tion to be made not only " throughout all 
the land," but in a special manner it in- 
cluded those beyond Jordan. They did not 
disobey ; but came with other Israelites, 
from all quarters, to the standard of the king 
at Gilgal. The people generally, though 
destitute of proper military weapons, were 
much inspirited by the success of Jonathan, 
and by their confidence in the now tried 
valour and military conduct of the king. 

Meanwhile the Philistines were not heed- 
less of this movement among the Israelites. 
No sooner did they hear of the defeat of their 
garrison in Gibeah than they assembled a 
formidable force, which seemed sufficient to 
overwhelm all opposition. It was composed 
of 30,000 chariots of war*, 6000 horsemen, 
and " people as the sand which is on the 
sea-shore in multitude." The enthusiasm 
of the disarmed Israelites evaporated in the 
presence of this powerful force ; and the 
army of Saul diminished every day, as great 
numbers of the men stole away to seek 
refuge in caves, in woods, in rocks, in towers, 
and in pits. 

Saul had exhibited his inability of under- 

* See note in ' Pictorial Bible,' 1 Sam. ch. xiii. v. 5, for 

some remarks as to this extraordinary number of chariots. 



standing his true position, or his disposition 
to regard himself as an independent sove- 
reign, by entering upon or provoking this 
war without consulting, through Samuel or 
the priest, the Divine will. Although not 
formally so declared, it was the well-under- 
stood practice of the Hebrew constitution, 
that no war against any other than the doomed 
nations of Canaan would be undertaken 
without the previous consent and promised 
assistance of the Great King. Yet Saul, 
without any such authority, had taken mea- 
sures which were certain to produce a war 
with the Philistines. He probably thought 
that the aggressions of the Philistines, and 
their existing position as the oppressors of 
Israel, and their intrusion into the Hebrew 
territory, made his undertaking so obviously 
just and patriotic as to render a direct 
authorisation superfluous, as its refusal could 
not be supposed : nor are we quite sure that 
in this he was mistaken. Be this as it may, 
Samuel was not willing that such a prece- 
dent should be established ; and therefore 
he had appointed to meet Saul on a par- 
ticular day at Gilgal, to offer burnt-offerings 
and peace-offerings, and to show him what 
he should do, that is, both to propitiate the 
Lord, as on other occasions, and to advise 
Saul how to act in carrying on the war. On 
the appointed day Samuel did not arrive as 
soon as the king expected. The prophet 
probably delayed his coming on purpose to 
test his fidelity and obedience. Saul failed 
in this test. Seeing his force hourly dimin- 
ishing by desertions ; and, in the pride of his 
fancied independence, considering that he 
had as much right as the Egyptian and 
other kings to perform the priestly functions, 
he ordered the victims to be brought, and 
offered them himself upon the altar. This 
usurpation of the priestly office by one who 
had no natural authority as an Aaron ite, nor 
any special authorisation as a prophet, was 
decisive of the character and the fate of 
Saul. If the principles of the theocracy 
were to be preserved, and if the political 
supremacy of Jehovah was at all to be 
maintained, it was indispensably necessary 
that the first manifestation by the kings 
of autocratic dispositions and of self-willed 



I GHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



237 



assumption of superiority to the law, should 
be visited by severe examples of punishment ; 
for if not checked in the beginnings, the 
growth would have been fatal to the con- 
stitution. It will hence appear that the 
punishments which Saul incurred for this 
and other acts manifesting the same class of 
dispositions, were not so disproportioned to 
his offences, or so uncalled for by the oc- 
casions of the state, as some persons have 
been led to imagine. 

Saul had scarcely made an end of offering 
his sacrifices before he was apprised of the 
approach of Samuel, and went forth to meet 
him. The apology lie made to the prophet 
for what he had done, — that his force was 
diminishing, and that he was afraid that if 
he delayed any longer the Philistines would 
fall upon him before sacrifices had been 
offered to Jehovah — showed little of that 
reliance upon the Divine King, which every 
Hebrew general was expected to manifest ; 
and but little anxiety to receive those pro- 
phetic counsels which Samuel had promised 
to deliver. Under nearly similar circum- 
stances, how different was the conduct of 
Gideon, wh© gained immortal honour by 
those theocratic sentiments which enabled 
him to leave to his successors a memorable 
example of confidence in God ! Samuel saw 
through the hollowness of Saul's apology, 
and warned him that by such sentiments as 
he entertained, and such conduct as he 
manifested, he was rendering himself un- 
worthy to be the founder of a royal house, 
inasmuch as he could not become a pattern 
to his successors ; and that by persevering in 
such a course he would compel the appoint- 
ment of one more worthy than himself to 
reign over Israel, and to be the father of a 
kingly race. Samuel then retired from 
Gilgal, leaving Saul to carry on, as he saw 
best, the war he had undertaken. 

On numbering his remaining force, Saul 

: found that but 600 men remained with him. 
With a force less than this, enemies as for- 
midable as the Philistines had in former 

i times been defeated. But Saul, entirely 
overlooking, or distrusting, that Divine as- 
sistance which every Hebrew leader in a 

: lust war was entitled to expect, and, re- 



garding only the disparity of his force, felt 
that it would be imprudent to engage or 
oppose so vast an army with a mere handful 
of disheartened men. He therefore retired 
from the field, and threw himself into the 
re-conquered fortress of Gibeah. On dis- 
covering his retreat, the Philistines sent 
three powerful detachments in different 
directions to ravage the country, while the 
main body of their army still remained 
encamped near Michmash. 

In this extremity an entire change was 
wrought in the aspect of affairs through the 
daring valour of Jonathan. Accompanied 
only by his armour-bearer, he withdrew 
secretly from the camp, and, by climbing, 
opened himself a passage to one of the out- 
posts of the Philistines, upon the summit of 
a cliff, deemed inaccessible, and therefore 
not very strongly guarded ; and, penetrating 
to the enemy by so new and unexpected a 
path, he killed the advanced pickets, and, 
supported by his follower, slew all whom his 
hand encountered, and bore disorder and 
alarm into the camp of the Philistines, then 
much weakened by the detachments we have 
mentioned. The cries which arose from this 
part of the camp confounded and terrified 
the more distant parts ; so that, aware of the 
presence of an enemy, which yet did not 
appear to them, they turned their arms 
against one another, and destroyed them- 
selves with the blind fury of despairing men. 
The clamour which arose in the Philistine 
camp was heard by the Israelites. Saul at 
first was willing to go through the form of 
consulting the Lord by urim; but the con- 
fusion increasing in the Philistine camp, he 
deemed it a time for action rather than 
counsel ; and directing the priest to forbear, 
he hastened to join his valiant son, whose 
absence was now known, and to whom this 
disorder was rightly attributed. The enemy 
were already flying in all directions, and 
Saul, with his small band, committed terrible 
havoc upon the fugitives. While thus en- 
gaged, his force increased with still greater 
rapidity than it had previously diminished ; 
for not only did the Hebrew captives take 
the opportunity of making their escape and 
joining their king, but great numbers came 



238 



THE BIBLE HISTOliY. 



[BOOK 17. 



forth from their lurking-places to join in the 
pursuit ; so that Saul soon found himself at 
the head of 6000 men. The rash and incon- 
siderate king, in his determination to make 
the most of his advantage, laid an inter- 
dictive curse upon any of his people who 
should taste food until the evening. Not 
only were the pursuers weakened and ex- 
hausted by the strict abstinence thus en- 
joined, but Jonathan, unaware of this 
interdict, unwittingly transgressed it, by 
tasting a little wild honey which he met 
with in his way through a forest. 

In the evening the famished people, being 
then released from the interdict, flew rave- 
nously upon the prey of cattle, and, in their 
impatience, began to devour the raw and 
living flesh. This being a transgression of 
the law, which forbade meat, not properly 
exsanguinated, to be eaten, Saul, who was 
really rather zealous to observe the law 
v.- hen it did not interfere with his own 
objects, interposed, and ordered the meat to 
be properly and legally slaughtered and 
prepared for food. 

The people being now refreshed, Saul 
proposed to continue the pursuit during the 
night, but deemed it prudent first to consult 
the Lord, through the priest. No answer 
was given. This Saul interpreted to intimate 
that his solemn interdict had been trans- 
gressed, and, again unreasoning and rash, he 
swore that even were the transgressor his 
own son Jonathan, he should surely be put 
to death. It was Jonathan : the lot de- 
termined this. His father told him he must 
die ; but the people, full of admiration of 
the young prince, protested that not a hair 
of his head should suffer damage, and thus 
saved his life. 

This campaign, although concluded with- 
out a battle, was not the less productive of 
durable advantage. The glory which Saul 
acquired by it strengthened his authority 
among his own people, and henceforth no 
enemy to which he could be opposed seemed 
invincible to him. We see him, indeed, 
waging war, in turn, against Moab, Ammon, 
and Edom, and against the Amalekites and 
the Philistines; and in whatever direction 
he turned his arms, he obtained the victory 



and honour. Valiant himself, he esteemed 
valour in others ; and whenever he dis- 
covered a man of ability and courage, he 
endeavoured to draw him near to himself, 
and to attach him to his person. The 
qualities most prized by Saul were eminently 
possessed by his own cousin Abner, and he 
became " captain of the host," or gene- 
ralissimo of the army of Israel. 

The several expeditions of Saul against 
the enemies of Israel took up, at intervals, 
the space of five or six years. During these 
years, Samuel, without further interference 
in political affairs, continued to watch the 
civil interests of the peoj^le, and to ad- 
minister justice between them. The authority 
which he still preserved in Israel was very 
great, and probably not considerably less 
than it had been at any former time. 

About the tenth or eleventh year of Saul's 
reign, God made known to the prophet that 
the iniquity of the Amalekites had now 
reached its height, and that the time was 
fully come when the old sentence of utter 
extermination should be executed. Saul 
was charged with its execution ; and his 
commission, as delivered to him by Samuel, 
was expressed in the most absolute terms, 
and left the king no option to spare aught 
that breathed. Under this supreme order, 
the king made a general call upon all the 
tribes, which brought together an army of 
200,000 men, among whom there were but 
10,000 men of Judah. The deficiency of 
that tribe in supplying its due proportion is 
probably not noticed by the historian on this 
and on a former occasion, without some 
object ; and that object probably was to 
convey the intimation that since the sceptre 
had been of old promised to that tribe, it 
was discontented at the government of Saul, 
and less hearty than the other tribes in its 
obedience. 

The king led his army into the territory 
of Amalek. There he made the most able 
disposition of his forces, seized the most 
favourable positions, and then turned his 
advantages against the enemy. A general 
action followed, in which the Israelites were 
victorious, and they pursued the Amalekites 
to their most distant and last retreats. Agag, 



CHAP. I.J 



SAUL. 



239 



the king, was taken alive with all his riches. 
Blinded by his ambition and his avarice to 
the danger of acting in defiance of a most 
positive and public command from God 
| himself, Saul determined to spare the life of 
! Agag, and to preserve the most valuable 
I parts of all the booty from destruction; but 
with a most insulting or weak mockery of 
obedience, " everything that was vile and 
refuse, that they utterly destroyed." He 
i then led home his triumphant army, and 
paused in the land of Eastern Carmel*, 
where he erected a monument of the most 
important and distant expedition in which 
he had hitherto been engaged. He then 
passed on to Gilgal. Samuel came to him 
there soon after his arrival, and at once 
charged him with his disobedience. Saul 
behaved with a degree of confusion and 
meanness which we should scarcely have 
expected from him, and which the conscious- 
ness of wrong-doing only can explain. He 
affirmed and persisted that he had obeyed 
the Divine command, when everything before 
and around him evinced that he had not. 
In the end he confessed that he had acted 
wrong ; but then excused himself by laying 
one part of it on the zeal of the people to 
sacrifice the best of the catrle to Jehovah, 
and part to his own fear of restraining them 
from it. It was a great grief to Samuel to 
hear the king of Israel betray such mean- 
ness of soul, in palliating an unjustifiable 
action ; and, conceding the truth of the 
latter statement, he asked with severity, 
"Hath Jehovah as great delight in burnt- 
offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the 
voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is better 
than sacrifice ; and to hearken than the fat 
of rams." He then continued authoritatively, 
as a prophet, to announce his rejection from 
being the founder of a royal house, as the 
fixed purpose of the Divine King whose 
imperative commands he had publicly dis- 
obeyed, or assumed a power of dispensing 
with, to such an extent as suited his con- 
venience. It would be wrong to consider 

* On the south-western borders of the Dead Sea, and 
which we call " Eastrm Carmel" to distinguish it from 
*' Mount Carmel," which lies westward, on the Mediter- 
ranean. 



this as the sole act or omission for which 
this rejection was incurred. It was but one 
of many acts by which he indicated an utter 
incapability of apprehending his true position, 
and in consequence manifested dispositions 
and conduct utterly at variance with the 
principles of government which the welfare 
of the state, and, indeed, the very objects of 
its foundation, made it most essential to 
maintain. Unless the attempts at absolute 
independence made by Saul were checked, 
or visited with some signal mark of the 
Divine displeasure, the precedents established 
by the first king were likely to become the 
rule to future sovereigns. And hence the 
necessity, now at the beginning, of peculiar 
strictness, or even of severity, for preventing 
the establishment of bad rules and precedents 
for future reigns. 

Saul at first betrayed more anxiety about 
present appearances than ultimate results; 
and he entreated Samuel to remain, and 
honour him in the sight of the people, by 
joining with him in an act of worship to 
Jehovah. Samuel refused ; and as he turned 
to go away, the king caught hold of the 
skirt of his robe to detain him, with such 
force, that the skirt was rent off. So hath 
God, said the prophet, " rent the kingdom of 
Israel from thee, this day, and hath given it 
to a neighbour of thine who is better than 
thou. Nor will He who gives victory to 
Israel lie or repent; for he is not a man, 
that he should repent." The expression 
which w T e have here particularly indicated 
was probably intended and understood as a 
further rebuke for the triumphal monument 
which Saul had erected in Carmel, and 
whereby he seemed to claim to himself that 
honour for the recent victory which, under 
the principles of the theocracy, was due to 
God only. Samuel, however, complied with 
the earnest wish of the king, and returned 
with him to the camp. There acting on the 
stern injunction which Saul had neglected, 
the prophet commanded the king of the 
Amalekites, by whose sword many mothers 
in Israel had been made childless, to be put 
to death. When the prophet and the king 
separated, the former proceeded to his usual 
residence at Ramah, and went no more to 



240 

see Saul to the day of his death. Yet as he 
had a great regard for a man who, with all 
his faults, had many good natural qualities 
which would well have fitted him for rule in 
a simple human monarchy, and who, more- 
over, was faithful and even zealous for 
Jehovah, as his God, however deficient in 
obedience to him as his King, the prophet 
continued long to mourn greatly for him, 
and to bewail the doom which it had been 
his painful duty to declare. 

After fifteen years, the Lord rebuked 
Samuel for this useless repining, and com- 
manded him to proceed to Bethlehem, there 
to anoint the man worthier than Saul, whom 
he had chosen to fill his forfeited place, and 
to become the founder of a royal house. 
This was a delicate mission; for Samuel 
knew enough of Saul to fear that he would 
not scruple to put even himself to death if 
the fact came to his knowledge. He there- 
fore veiled his real object under the form of 
a public sacrifice, which, in his prophetic 
character, he had a right to enjoin. That 
he still retained his authority as civil judge 
is evinced by the alarm which his unexpected 
visit occasioned to the elders of Bethlehem, 
who "trembled" at his coming, for fear it 
should be not " peaceably," but in judgment. 

The family to which Samuel was sent was 
that of Jesse, the grandson of Boaz and 
Ruth, and, as such, a person of consideration 
in that place. Jesse was the father of eight 
sons, all of whom were present in Bethlehem, 
save the youngest, David by name, who was 
abroad with his father's flock. The whole 
family was invited by the prophet to be 
present at his sacrifice. Samuel knew that 
the destined king was to be found among 
Jesse's sons, but knew not as yet for which 
of them that distinction was intended. Still 
influenced by those general prepossessions in 
fa vour of such personal qualities as he had 
formerly beheld in Saul with complacency 
and admiration, Samuel no sooner beheld 
the commanding and stately figure of Jesse's 
eldest son, Eliab, than he concluded that 
" the Lord's anointed was before him." For 
this he received the striking rebuke, " Look 
not on his countenance, or on the height of 
his stature ; because I have refused him : | 



[book IV. 

for Jehovah seeth not as man seeth; for 
man looketh on the outward appearance, but 
Jehovah looketh on the heart." It further 
appeared that no one of the other sons of 
Jesse then present was the object of the 
Divine choice. On this, Samuel, with some 
surprise, asked Jesse whether he had other 
sons ; and learning that the youngest, a mere 
youth of fifteen years old, was abroad in the 
fields, he caused him to be sent for. When 
he arrived, Samuel was struck by his un- 
commonly handsome appearance, especially 
by a freshness of complexion unusual in that 
country, and by the singular fire and beauty 
of his eyes. The Divine choice was at once 
intimated to him, " Arise, anoint him : for 
this is he ! " As in the case of Saul himself, 
this precious anointing was significant only 
of the Divine intention and choice. As Saul 
had returned to his fields, so David returned 
to his flock. The path to the throne was to 
be opened by circumstances which did not 
yet appear. The anointing was the sign and 
seal of an ultimate intention. For the present 
David was not more a king, nor Saul less 
one, than before. 

The doom of exclusion had been pro- 
nounced upon Saul at a time when he was 
daily strengthening himself on the throne, 
and increasing in power, popularity, and 
fame; and when his eldest son, Jonathan, 
stood, and deserved to stand, so high in the 
favour of all the people, that no man could, 
according to human probabilities, look upon 
any one else as likely to succeed him in the 
throne. But when the excitement of war 
and victory had subsided, and the king had 
leisure to consider and brood over the solemn 
and declaredly irrevocable sentence which 
the prophet had pronounced, a very serious 
effect was gradually produced upon his mind 
and character; for he was no longer pros- 
pered and directed by God, but left a prey 
to his own gloomy mind. The consciousness 
that he had not met the requirements of the 
high vocation to which, when he was little 
in his own sight, he had been called, to- 
gether with the threatened loss of his 
dominion and the possible destruction of his 
house, made him jealous, sanguinary, and 
irritable, and occasionally threw him into 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



241 



fits of the most profound and morbid melan- 
choly. This is what, in the language of 
Scripture, is called "the evil spirit" that 
" troubled him." That it was not a case of 
demoniacal possession, as some have been 
led by this form of expression to suppose, is 
obvious from the effects to which we shall 
presently advert. Nor was it needful; for, 
as acting upon the character of man, earth 
contains not a more evil spirit than the 
guilty or troubled mind abandoned to its 
own impulses. 

Not long after David had been anointed 
by Samuel, the mental malady of Saul 
gathered such strength — the fits of his mad 
melancholy became so long and frequent, 
that some remedial measures appeared ne- 
cessary. Remembering that Saul had always 
been remarkably sensible to the influence of 
sweet sounds, it occurred to his friends that 
it might be attended with good effects, were 
an able musician retained at court, to play 
before the king, when his fits of gloom and 
horror came upon him. Saul himself ap- 
proved of this advice, and directed that a 
person with the suitable qualifications should 
be sought. This reminded one of the 
courtiers how skilfully and sweetly he had 
heard the youngest son of Jesse play upon 
the harp; and in mentioning this to the 
king he also took occasion to commend 
David as a young man of known valour, 
prudent in conduct, and very comely in his 
person. From this and other corroborative 
circumstances, it is easy to perceive that 
music was now, and much earlier, cultivated 
by the Hebrews as a private accomplishment 
and solace. It formed their most usual 
relaxation, and divided their time with the 
labours of agriculture and the care of flocks. 

The report which he had heard engaged 
Saul to send to Jesse, demanding his son 
David. The old man accordingly sent him 
to court, together with such a present to the 
king as the customs of the age — and of the 
east in all ages, required as an homage. It 
consisted of a quantity of bread, a skin-bottle 
of wine, and a kid. 

Thus, in the providence of God, an opening 
was made for David, whereby he might 
I become acquainted with the manners of the 



court, the business of government, and the 
affairs and interests of the several tribes, 
and was put in the way of securing the 
equally important advantage of becoming 
extensively known to the people. These 
were training circumstances for the high 
destinies which awaited him. Saul himself, 
ignorant that in him he beheld the "man 
worthier than himself," on whom the in- 
heritance of his throne was to devolve, 
contributed to these preparations. He re- 
ceived the youthful minstrel with fervour ; 
and, won by his engaging disposition and 
the beauties of his mind and person, not less 
than by the melody of his harp, became 
much attached to him. The personal bravery 
of David, also, did not long remain unnoticed 
by the veteran hero, who soon elevated him 
to the honourable and confidential station of 
his armour-bearer — having obtained Jesse's 
consent to allow his son to remain in attend- 
ance upon him. His presence was a great 
solace and relief to Saul ; for whenever he 
fell into his fits of melancholy, David played 
on his harp before him ; and its soft and 
soothing strains soon calmed his troubled 
spirit, and brought peace to his soul. 

In the twenty- six years which had passed 
since the signal overthrow of the Philistines 
at Michmash, that people had recruited 
their strength, and at last* deemed them- 
selves able to wipe out the disgrace they 
then incurred, and to recover their previous 
superiority over the Israelites. They re- 
commenced the war by invading the terri- 
tory of Judah : Saul marched against them ; 
and the two armies encamped in the face of 
each other, on the sides of opposite moun- 
tains which a valley separated. While thus 
stationed the Hebrews were astonished and 
terrified to behold a man of enormous' 
stature, between nine and ten feet high, 
advance from the camp of the Philistines 
attended by his armour-bearer. His name 
was Goliath. He was arrayed in complete 
mail, and armed with weapons proportioned 
to his bulk. He stood forth between the 
hosts, and, as authorized by the Philistines, 
who were confident that his match could 

* B.C. 1080, five years after the anointing of David. 



E 



242 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[book IV 



not be found, proposed, with great arro- 
gance of language, that the question of 
tribute and servitude should be determined 
by the result of a single combat between 
himself and any champion which might be 
opposed to him. The Israelites were quite 
as much dismayed at the appearance of 
Goliath, and at the proposal which he made, 
as the Philistines could have expected, or 
as the Philistines themselves would have 
been under the same circumstances. No 
heart in Israel was found stout enough to 
dare the encounter with this dreadful Phi- 
listine; nor was any man then present 
willing to take on his single arm the serious 
consequences of the possible result. Then 
finding that no one of riper years or higher 
pretensions offered himself to the combat, 
David presented himself before Saul, whom 
he attended as his armour-bearer, and said, 
"Let no man's heart fail because of him; 
thy servant will go and fight with this 
Philistine." But Saul told him that he was 
unequal to such a contest, " for thou art but 
a youth, and he a man of war from his 
youth." The reply of David was equally 
forcible and modest: — Thy servant tended 
his father's flock; and when there came a 
lion or a bear, and took a lamb out of the 
flock, then I pursued him and smote him, 
and snatched it from his mouth ; and if he 
rose against me, I caught him by the beard, 
and smote him, and slew him. Both lions 
and bears hath thy servant smitten, and 
this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like 
one of them. Let me go and smite him, 
and take away the reproach from Israel ; for 
who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he 
should defy the hosts of the living God? 
He added, " Jehovah who delivered me from 
the power of lions and bears will deliver me 
from the hand of this Philistine." Saul had 
been too little accustomed to this mode of 
speaking and feeling not to be struck by it. 
Although he had himself not been prone to 
exhibit military confidence in God, he per- 
ceived that such a confidence now supplied 
the only prospect of success; he therefore 
said, " Go ; and may Jehovah be with thee !" 
He would fain have arrayed him in his own 
complete armour; but David rejected this 



as an incumbrance, and stepped lightly for- 
ward in his ordinary dress, and without 
sword or shield, or spear, having only in his 
right hand a sling — with the use of which 
early pastoral habits had made him familiar 
— and in his left a little bag, containing five 
smooth pebbles picked up from the small 
brook that then meandered and still mean- 
ders through the valley of Elah. The giant 
was astonished, and felt insulted that a mere 
youth should be sent forth to contend with 
so redoubted a champion as himself ; and 
availing himself of the pause which the 
ancient champions were wont to take to 
abuse, threaten, and provoke each other, he 
cried, " Am I a dog, that thou comest to me 
with staves?" He then cursed him by his 
god, and, like the old Homeric heroes, 
threatened to give his flesh to the fowls of 
the air and to the beasts of the field. 
David's reply, conceived in the finest and 
truest spirit of the theocracy, at once 
satisfies us that we behold in him the man 
fit to reign over the peculiar people. 
" Thou comest to me with a sword, and 
with a spear, and with a shield ; but I come 
to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, 
the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou 
hast defied. This day will Jehovah deliver 
thee into mine hand ; and I will smite thee, 
and take thine head from thee ; and I will 
give the carcasses of the host of the Phi- 
listines this day unto the fowls of the air, 
and to the wild beasts of the earth ; that all 
the earth may know that there is a God in 
Israel. And all this assembly shall know 
that Jehovah saveth not with sword and 
spear; for the battle is Jehovah's, and he 
will give you into our hands." On this the 
enraged giant strode forward ; and David 
hastened to fit a stone to his sling ; and he 
flung it with so true an aim that it smote 
the Philistine in the only vulnerable part 
that was not cased in armour, his forehead, 
and buried itself deep in his brain. He 
then ran and cut ofi" the monster's head 
with his own sword, thus fulfilling the 
prediction he had just uttered. A few 
minutes after he had gone forth, he re- 
turned, and laid the head and sword of the 
giant at the feet of Saul. 



CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



243 



The overthrow of their champion struck 
a panic into the Philistines. They fled, and 
were pursued with great slaughter, even to 
their own country, by the Israelites, who 
then returned and plundered their camp. 

The honour A\hich David won by this 
splendid achievement was too great for his 
safety. Saul could not but feel that the 
sort of spirit by which the youthful hero 
had been actuated was precisely that which 
on many preceding occasions he himself 
ought to have manifested, and for not doing 
which the doom of exclusion had been pro- 
nounced against him. The feeling that 
David was really the hero of the recent 
fight, was also not pleasant to one so jealous 
of his military glory. And when the women 
came forth from their towns to greet the 
returning conquerors with their instruments 
of music, and sang responsively to their 
tabrets and their viols, — 

" Saul has smitten his thousands, 
But David has his ten thousands slain," 

the indignation of the king was provoked to 
the utmost. " They have ascribed unto 
David ten thousands, and to me but thou- 
sands: what can he have more," he said, 
" but the kingdom 1 " It would therefore 
seem that this preference of David to him 
by the women in their songs first suggested 
to him the possibility that he was the man, 
worthier than himself, who was destined to 
succeed him and to supersede his de- 
scendants : and the notion having once 
occurred, he probably made such inquiries 
as enabled him to conclude or to discover 
that such was the fact. His knowledge of 
it appears soon after; and we know that 
from this time forward David became the 
object, not merely of his envy and jealousy, 
but of his hatred and dislike. Yet he was 
afraid, if he as yet wished, to do him any 
open injury ; but as he could not bear him 
any longer in his former close attendance 
about his person, he threw him more into 
the public service, intrusting to him the 
command of a thousand men. From his 
subsequent expressions and conduct, it 
seems likely that the king expected that 
the inexperience of youth might lead David 



into such errors in this responsible public 
station as would either give him occasion to 
act against him, or would seriously damage 
his character with the people. But if such 
were his views, they were grievously dis- 
appointed. In his public station " David 
behaved himself wisely in all his ways ; and 
Jehovah was with him;" and the oppor- 
tunity which was given him only served to 
evince his talents for business and his atten- 
tion to it; and, consequently, to increase 
and establish that popularity among the 
people which his character and exploits had 
already won. And so it was, that the dis- 
like and apprehensions of Saul increased in 
proportion to the abilities and discretion 
which David evinced, and to the popularity 
which he acquired. 

The king was under the full operation of 
those feelings, which as yet he durst not 
avow, when he happened to learn that his 
daughter Michal had become attached to 
David. This was far from displeasing him, 
as he thought it gave him an opportunity of 
entrapping the son of Jesse to his own 
destruction. He promised her to him ; but 
on the condition of so difficult an enterprise 
against the Philistines, as he fully expected 
would ensure his death. But David, always 
victorious, returned in a few days with more 
numerous pledges of his valour than the 
king had ventured to demand ; and he was 
then married to Michal, who could not with 
any decency be refused to him. 

In some subsequent actions against the 
Philistines, with whom a desultory warfare 
was still carried on, David displayed such 
courage and military skill as greatly in- 
creased his renown in Israel, and increased 
in the same proportion the animosity of 
Saul. His hate became at last so ungovern- 
able, that he could no longer confine the 
dark secret to his own bosom, or limit him- 
self to underhand attempts against the life 
of Jesse's son. He avowed it to his son 
Jonathan and to his courtiers, charging 
them to take any favourable opportunity of 
putting him to death. He knew not yet of 
the strong attachment which subsisted be- 
tween J onathan and David— that his noble 
son, rising far above all selfishness, pride, or 

u 2 



244 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



envy, loved the son of Jesse even "as his 
own soul." He heard the command with 
horror, and apprised David of it, counselling 
him to hide himself until he should have an 
opportunity of remonstrating on the subject 
privately with the king. This he did with 
such effect, displaying the services and 
fidelity of David with such force, that the 
better reason of Saul prevailed for the time, 
and he solemnly swore to make no further 
attempt against his life. 

But not long after, all the evil passions of 
Saul were again roused by the increased 
renown which David obtained, by a splendid 
victory over the Philistines. He had scarce 
returned to court before he had a narrow 
escape of being pinned to the wall by a 
javelin which the king threw at him in one 
of those fits of frenzied melancholy, which 
the son of Jesse was at that moment en- 
deavouring to sooth by playing on his 
harp. 

David then withdrew to his own house. 
But the king had now committed himself, 
and henceforth threw aside all disguise or 
restraint. He sent some of his attendants 
to watch the house; and David would un- 
doubtedly have been murdered the next 
morning, had not his faithful wife managed 
his escape during the night, by letting him 
down in a basket through one of the 
windows. In the morning, when the man 
demanded admittance with the intention of 
slaying her husband, Michal told them he 
was very ill and confined to his bed ; and in 
proof of it showed them the bed, in which 
she had placed a figure made up so as to 
present the appearance of a body covered 
with the bed-clothes. This news they car- 
ried to the king, who sent them back with 
orders to bring him alive in his bed. By 
this means Michal's artifice was discovered, 
and her father was so enraged, that, for her 
own safety, she made him believe that it 
was to save her own life she had consented 
to it. 

As tne only revenge then in his power, 
Saul took away Michal, and gave her in 
marriage to another; and the story which 
she had made up, that David had put her in 
fear of her life, probably precluded her 



from making that strenuous opposition 
which she might otherwise have done. 

David himself escaped to Ramah, where 
he acquainted Samuel with all the king's 
behaviour to him. Samuel took him to 
Naioth, which seems to have been a kind of 
school or college of the prophets, in the 
neighbourhood of Ramah, over which Samuel 
presided. Saul soon heard where he was; 
and so reckless was he now become, and so 
madly bent on his murderous object, that 
he would not respect even this asylum, but 
sent messengers to bring David to him. 
These, when they beheld the company of 
prophets, with Samuel at their head, " pro- 
phesying," or singing hymns, fell into an 
ecstasy, and "prophesied" in like manner. 
The same happened to a second and a third 
party. At last Saul determined to go him- 
self ; and in his rage he probably intended 
to slay Samuel also for sheltering David. 
Indeed, that the youth had gone to Samuel, 
and was sheltered by him, must have con- 
firmed his conviction that David was his 
appointed successor, if he did not yet know, 
as he probably did, that the son of Jesse 
had actually been anointed by the prophet. 
But no sooner had the king beheld what 
had so strongly affected his messengers, than 
he also, as had happened to him in his 
happier days, "prophesied," and lay in an 
ecstatic trance, divested of his outer gar- 
ment, all that day and night. 

This gave David an opportunity to leave 
the neighbourhood; and he repaired to 
Gibeah, where the king resided, and where 
Jonathan then was, to seek a private inter- 
view with that valuable friend. Jonathan 
thought himself fully acquainted with all 
the intentions of his father, and would not 
believe that he really designed the death of 
David. But the latter was well assured of 
it; and thought that Saul, having become 
acquainted with their friendship, had con- 
cealed his full purpose from Jonathan. It 
was, however, agreed between them that the 
conduct of the king on an approaching 
occasion, should be deemed to determine his 
ultimate intentions ; and that meanwhile 
David should keep himself concealed. The 
two friends then walked forth into the 



CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



245 



fields. Jonathan then avowed to David his 
conviction that he, and not himself, was the 
destined successor of Saul ; and, with rare 
generosity of spirit and abandonment of 
self, he expressed his cheerful assent to this, 
and only desired to receive the pledge of 
David that, if himself alive when he became 
king, protection should be granted to him 
from the designs which evil men might 
entertain; and that if not himself living, 
kindness should be extended to his family 
for his sake. This was a matter in which 
he might be allowed at this time to feel 
more than usual anxiety, as it appears, from 
a comparison of dates, that a son, Mephi- 
bosheth, had lately been born to him. Re- 
ciprocally, he would pledge himself to 
protect the life of David, to the extent of 
his power, from the designs of Saul and his 
other enemies. These things they swore 
before God to each other, and entered to- 
gether into a covenant of peace and love. 

It seems that by this time Saul lived in 
considerable state. At the recurrence of 
the new moons he was accustomed to 
entertain his principal officers at meat. 
Such a feast was now near at hand ; and it 
appears that Saul, who knew that David 
had returned to Gibeah, expected that, not- 
withstanding what had passed, he would 
make his appearance at this feast, as it 
would seem that non-attendance was re- 
garded as an offensive neglect. Most pro- 
bably the king thought that David might 
regard the attempt which had been made 
upon his life as mere frenetic impulse, not 
indicative of any deliberate intention against 
him. The first day of the feast, the place 
which belonged to David at the king's table 
was vacant ; but Saul then made no remark, 
thinking the absence might be accidental. 
But when the son of Jesse made no appear- 
ance on the second day, the king put some 
questions to Jonathan, who excused David's 
absence, alleging that it was by his per- 
mission and consent. On this Saul broke 
forth into the grossest abuse of Jonathan, 
and assuring him that his succession to the 
throne could never be secure while David 
lived, concluded with, " Wherefore now send 
and fetch him unto me, for he shall surely 



die." And when Jonathan ventured to 
remonstrate, " Wherefore shall he be slain 1 
What hath he done?" the maddened king 
threw his javelin to smite him. That he 
could thus treat his own son, on whom, in 
fact, all the hopes that remained to him 
were centred, lessens our wonder at his be- 
haviour to David, and at the other acts of 
madness of which he was guilty. By this 
Jonathan knew that the king really in- 
tended to destroy his friend. He therefore 
took his bow, and went forth, attended by a 
lad, as if to shoot in the field where David 
lay hid; for it had been agreed upon be- 
tween them that the manner in which the 
arrows were shot, and the expressions used 
by the archer to the lad who collected the 
arrows after they had been discharged, was 
to be a sign intimating to David the course 
he was to take ; thus preventing the danger 
which might accrue to both from another 
interview. But when the unfavourable sign 
had been given, which he knew would render 
his friend a fugitive, Jonathan could not 
resist the desire again to commune with him 
-before he departed. He therefore sent away 
the lad, and as soon as he was gone " David 
arose out of a place toward the south, and 
fell on his face to the ground, and bowed 
himself three times: and they kissed one 
another, and wept one with another, until 
David exceeded." 

After taking leave of Jonathan, David 
took his journey westward, with the inten- 
tion of putting himself beyond the reach of 
Saul, by going to the land of the Philistines, 
who were not at that time in actual hos- 
tilities with the Israelites, and with whom 
alone the enmity of Saul was not likely to 
operate to his disadvantage. In his way, 
attended by a few young men who were 
attached to him, he came to the town of 
Nob, belonging to the priests, about twelve 
miles from Gibeah, and in the neighbourhood 
of Jerusalem and Anathoth. To this place 
the tabernacle had at this time been re- 
moved. We are not made acquainted with 
the precise occasion of its removal from 
Shiloh ; but it was probably consequent 
upon the destruction of that town in the 
war with the Philistines. At this place he 



246 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



was received, as his rank and renown de- 
manded, by the high-priest Ahimelech, 
whose surprise at seeing him he thought 
himself obliged to dispel, by the false and 
unseemly pretence that he had been sent by 
the king on private business of importance. 
But taking notice of the presence of one 
Doeg, an Edomite, the chief of Saul's 
shepherds, by whom he doubted not that he 
should be betrayed, he represented to Ahi- 
melech that his business was urgent, and 
begged that he would supply some refresh- 
ment to himself and his men, after which he 
would continue his journey. The high- 
priest had nothing to offer but bread which 
had lain a week on the table of shew-bread 
in the sanctuary ; and although by the 
priests only this might lawfully be eaten, he 
was induced by the alleged urgency of the 
occasion to give it to David and his men. 
David afterwards inquired for weapons ; and 
was told there were none but the sword of 
Goliath, which, as a pious memorial of the 
victory over that proud blasphemer, had 
been deposited in the tabernacle. This at 
his desire was brought to him, and, having 
girded it on, he took leave of Ahimelech, 
and continued his journey till he reached 
the Philistine city of Gath, where he pre- 
sented himself, or was brought, before 
Achish, the king of that place, or rather 
of the state of which that place was the 
denominating metropolis. It does not ap- 
pear that David intended himself to be 
known ; or if so, anticipated a more favour- 
able reception: for when he found that 
he was recognised, and that the courtiers 
ominously represented him as that David 
to whom the maidens of Israel had in 
their songs ascribed the slaughter of tens 
of thousands of Philistines, and thousands 
only to Saul, dreading the result of such 
recollections, David feigned himself mad, 
with such success that Achish exclaimed, 
" Lo, ye see the man is mad; wherefore then 
have ye brought him to me ? Have I need 
of madmen, that ye have brought this fellow 
to play the madman in my presence 1 Shall 
this fellow come into my house?" He was 
therefore allowed to go where he pleased. 
He delayed not to avail himself of this ad- 



vantage, and hastened into the territory of 
his own tribe of Judah, where he found 
shelter in the cave of Adullam. He was 
here joined by his parents and family, -who 
probably deemed themselves unsafe in Beth- 
lehem; and. as soon as his retreat became 
known in the neighbourhood, his reputation 
attracted to him a considerable number of 
men hanging loose upon society, as in the 
somewhat analogous case of Jephthah. To 
understand some of their future operations 
under David, it is quite necessary to give 
I them just that character, and no other, 
which they bear in the Scriptural record, 
which states that every one that was in dis- 
tress, every one that was in debt, and every 
one that was discontented, gathered them- 
selves unto him ; and he became a captain 
over them, and there were with him about 
four hundred men." 

From Adullam David took an opposite 
direction to that which he had first followed, 
and went into the land of Moab. Here he 
was well received ; for the king consented to 
take the parents of the outcast under his 
protection, until the dawning of better days. 
They therefore remained among the Moab- 
ites until the troubles of their son ended 
with the life of Saul. But although he might 
himself have found greater safety in that 
land, it was important to his future interests 
that he should return to his own country, 
that his conduct, adventures, and persecu- 
tions there, might keep him alive in the 
minds and sympathies of the people. He did 
not himself plan anything with reference to 
the destination intended for him ultimately ; 
but God, who best knew by what agencies to 
effect his purpose, sent the prophet Gad to 
command him to return into the land of 
Judah. He obeyed, and found shelter in the 
forest of Hareth. 

Saul soon heard of David's return, and the 
place of his retreat, and was greatly troubled ; 
for, as his safety could not be the object of 
this move from the security which Moab 
afforded, he inferred that he had returned 
with the intention of acting offensively and 
vindictively against him when occasion or 
advantage offered. He therefore called to- 
gether the officers of his court ; and as there 



CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



247 



was not, as yet, any building or palace in 
■which such assemblies could be held, the 
king sat upon a bank, under a tamarask- 
tree, with his spear in his hand. It seems 
that the persons present were chiefly Ben- 
jamites ; and Saul, speaking as one distrust- 
ful of their fidelity, appealed to their selfish 
interests, asking on what grounds they, as 
Benjamites, could hope to be bettered by the 
son of Jesse; and complained that there 
were plots between him and his own son 
Jonathan, of which they knew, but that they 
were not sorry for him, nor would give any 
information to him. On this, Doeg, the 
Edomite, informed him of the assistance 
which David had received at Nob from the 
high-priest; but omitted to state, if he knew, 
the certainly false grounds on which that 
assistance had been claimed by David and 
given by the priest ; and added, which was 
not true, that Ahimelech had " inquired of 
God" for him. On hearing this, Saul was 
highly enraged, and immediately sent for 
Ahimelech and all the priests of his family 
that were at Nob. When they arrived, the 
king fiercely charged him with his participa- 
tion in what his jealous imagination tortured 
into a conspiracy of David against him. 
Ahimelech declared that he had entertained 
him merely as the king's son-in-law, and one 
employed on the king's business, and denied 
that he had consulted the sacred oracle on 
his behalf; but Saul, without listening to 
his statement, commanded his followers to 
slay them all. A dead stillness followed 
this order; and, finding that no one moved 
to obey it, the frantic king turned to Doeg 
and commanded him to fall upon them. The 
unscrupulous Edomite was ready in his 
obedience ; and although the Israelites then 
present had refused to stain their own hands 
with the blood of the most sacred persons in 
the land, they had not sufficient spirit or 
principle to interpose in their behalf, but 
stood by and saw them slaughtered by Doeg 
and his myrmidons. Not fewer than eighty- 
five priests fell in this horrid massacre ; and 
immediately after, Doeg — by Saul's order, of 
course — proceeded to Nob, and slew all that 
lived in it — man, woman, child, and beast. 
This was a further development of that 



judgment upon the house of Eli which had 
been pronounced of old ; this was that deed 
in Israel of which it had been predicted that 
" both the ears of every one that heareth it 
shall tingle." The only individual of the 
family of the high-priest who escaped, was 
Abiathar, one of his sons. This person re- 
paired to David, who was deeply afflicted at 
the intelligence which he brought, and de- 
sired him to remain with him. 

Soon after this David heard that a party 
of Philistines had come up against the bor- 
der-town of Keilah, with the view of taking 
away the produce of the harvest which the 
people of that town had lately gathered in. 
He greatly desired to march his troop to the 
relief of that place ; but his men who, as 
might be expected from their character, 
were by no means distinguished for their 
courage or subordination, declined so bold an 
enterprise. At last, a distinct promise of 
victory from the sacred oracle, consulted by 
Abiathar who acted as priest, encouraged 
their obedience. They went and obtained a 
complete victory over the Philistines, de- 
livering Keilah from the danger by which it 
was threatened. This and other instances of 
David's readiness, in his own precarious 
situation, to employ his resources against the 
enemies of his country, must have tended 
much to raise his character among the 
people, and to keep him before the public 
^ye. 

He now entered and remained in the town 
he had relieved, which Saul no sooner under- 
stood than he exclaimed " God hath delivered 
him into mine hand ; for he is shut in, by 
entering into a town that hath gates and 
bars ;" and he delayed not to call together a 
powerful force, which he marched to besiege 
that place. But David, being apprised by 
the oracle that the people of Keilah, un- 
mindful of their obligation to him, would 
deliver him up to the king if he remained 
there until his arrival, withdrew from the 
place at the head of a force now increased 
to 600 men. When Saul heard this, he dis- 
continued his march against Keilah. 

David now sought shelter in the eastern 
part of Judea, towards the Dead Sea. There 
were strong posts and obscure retreats in 



248 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



that quarter, among the mountains and the 
woods, to which he successively removed, as 
the motions of Saul dictated ; for the king, 
now openly bent on his destruction, hastened 
to every place to which he heard that the 
son of Jesse had retreated, hunting him 
" like a partridge in the mountains." He 
was for some time in different parts of the 
wilderness of Ziph. He was sheltered by a 
wood in that wilderness, when Jonathan, be- 
coming acquainted with his place of retreat, 
went to him to encourage him to trust in 
God. He said to him, " Fear not : for the 
hand of Saul my father shall not find thee ; 
and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I 
shall be next to thee ; and that also Saul 
father hnowethP Again the friends renewed 
their covenant before Jehovah, and parted 
— l o meet no more. There is really nothing 
in all history finer than this love of Jonathan 
to David ; it was, as the latter himself found 
occasion to describe it, " Wonderful, passing 
the love of women ! " It was a noble spirit 
with which the son of the king held close to 
his heart, and admitted the superior claims 
of, the man destined to supersede him and 
his in the most splendid object of human 
ambition, which, on ordinary principles he 
might have considered his just inheritance. 
But his were not ordinary principles, such as 
swayed the mind and determined the con- 
duct of his father. His were the true prin- 
ciples of the theocracy, whereby he knew 
that Jehovah was the true king of Israel, 
and cheerfully submitted to his undoubted 
right to appoint whom he would as his re- 
gent, even to his own exclusion; and, with 
generous humility, was the first to recognise 
and admire the superior qualities of the man 
on whom it was known that his forfeited 
destinies had fallen. Yet lest, in our admi- 
ration of Jonathan's conduct, human virtue 
should seem too highly exalted, it may be 
well to remember, that the hereditary prin- 
ciple in civil government was as yet without 
precedent among the Hebrews, with whom 
sons had not yet learned to look to succeed 
their fathers in their public offices. None of 
the judges had transmitted their authority 
to their sons or relatives : and the only 
instance in which an attempt had been | 



made (by Abimelech) to establish this he- 
reditary principle, had most miserably failed. 
But the friendship of Jonathan and David 
is a passage in the history of the Hebrew 
kingdom from which the mind reluctantly 
withdraws. If it occurred in a fiction, it 
would be pointed out as an example of most 
refined and consummate art, that the author 
represents to us in such colours of beauty 
and truth the person he intends to set aside, 
and allows him so largely to share our sym- 
pathies and admiration with the hero of his 
tale. 

Not long after this, some inhabitants of 
Ziph went to Gibeah and acquainted the 
king with the quarter in which David lay 
hid. Saul was so transported with joy at 
the news, that he heartily blessed them as 
the only people who had compassion upon 
him in his trouble ; for by this time, if not 
before, it seems that his morbid fancy had 
fully persuaded him that David was really 
engaged in a conspiracy to take his life, 
and place the crown upon his own head. 
But David had timely intelligence that his 
retreat was betrayed, and withdrew south- 
ward into the wilderness of Maon. But Saul 
pursued him thither, and, with the design to 
surround him, was already on one side of the 
mountain on the other side of which David 
lay, when he was providentially called off by 
intelligence of a sudden incursion into the 
country by the Philistines. He went and 
repulsed them ; and then, at the head of 
three thousand men, returned to follow upon 
the tracks of Jesse's son — so inveterately 
was he now bent upon his fell purpose. 

Meanwhile David had removed to the dis- 
trict of Engeddi, towards the south-western 
extremity of the Dead Sea, the caverns and 
rocky fastnesses of which offered many secure 
retreats. Saul pursued him into this region, 
and one day entered a large cave, to repose 
himself during the heat of the day. Now it 
happened that David and his men were 
already in this cave ; but being in the re- 
mote and dark inner extremity, were unper- 
ceived by the king; but he, being between 
them and the light which entered at the 
cave's mouth, was seen and recognised by 
them. As he lay asleep, David's men joy- 



! CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



249 



fully congratulated him that his enemy was 
now completely in his power. Bujb they 
knew not what manner of spirit was in the 
son of Jesse. " Jehovah forbid," he said to 
them, " that I should do this thing unto my 
master, the anointed of Jehovah, to stretch 
forth mine hand against him ; seeing he is 
the anointed of Jehovah ;" and the men were 
; with difficulty restrained by these words 
from putting the king to death. But that 
he might know how completely his life had 
been in the hands of the man whose life he 
sought, David went and cut off the skirt of 
his mantle. Saul at length arose, and left 
the cave, and went his way. David went out 
and called after him, " My lord, the king ! " 
When Saul turned, David bowed himself 
reverently towards the earth, and proceeded 
in the most respectful terms to remonstrate 
against the injustice with which he had 
been treated and the inveteracy with which 
he was pursued. He charitably imputed 
the designs laid to his charge to the sugges- 
tions of evil-minded men ; and in proof of 
their utter groundlessness, related what had 
happened in the cave, and . produced the 
skirt to show how entirely the king's life 
had been in his power. Saul's naturally 
good feelings were touched by this generous 
forbearance, from one who knew that his own 
life was then sought by him : " Is this thy 
voice, my son David!" he cried, and his 
softened heart yielded refreshing tears, such 
as he had not lately been wont to shed. 
That which had been in David a forbearance 
resulting from the natural and spontaneous 
impulse of his own feelings, seemed to the 
king an act of superhuman virtue, which 
forced upon him the recognition that he was 
indeed that "worthier" man to whom the 
inheritance of his crown had been prophe- 
sied. Rendering good for evil was a new 
thing to him ; and now, in the regard and 
admiration which it excited, he freely ac- 
knowledged the conviction he entertained, — 
"And now, behold, I know well that thou 
shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom 
of Israel shall be established in thine hand. 
Swear now, therefore, unto me, by Jehovah, 
that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, 
and that thou wilt not destroy my name out 



of my father's house." The anxiety of the 
king, and even of Jonathan, on this point, 
seems to show (what has already appeared 
in the case of Abimelech) that it was even 
then, as it ever has been until lately, usual 
for oriental kings to remove by death all 
those whose claims to the throne might seem 
superior or equal to their own, or whose 
presence might offer an alternative to the 
discontented : the intense horror with which 
the Hebrews regarded the prospect or fear 
of genealogical extinction, also contributes 
to explain the anxiety which both Saul and 
Jonathan felt on this point more than on 
any other. David took the oath required 
from him ; Saul then returned to Gibeah, and 
David, who had little confidence in the per- 
manency of the impression he had made, re- 
mained in his strongholds. 

Very soon after this Samuel died, at the 
advanced age of ninety-two years*, after he 
had judged Israel fifty years, that is, twelve 
years alone, and thirty-eight years jointly 
with Saul ; for there is no doubt that he re- 
tained his authority as civil judge to the end 
of his life. The death of this good man was 
lamented as a common calamity by all true 
Israelites, who assembled in great numbers 
to honour his funeral. He was buried in the 
garden of his own house at Ramah. 

As David immediately after removed much 
further southward, even into " the wilderness 
of Paran," it would seem that, having no 
confidence in Saul's fit of right feeling, he 
was fearful of the consequences of the ab- 
sence of that degree of moral restraint upon 
him which had existed while the prophet 
lived. The southern country offers, in the 
proper season, excellent pastures, away to 
which those of J udah, who had large posses- 
sions of cattle, were wont to send their flocks 
during a part of the year. The advantage 
offered by the free use of these open pastures 
was, however, in some degree counter- 
balanced by the danger from the prowling 
Arab tribes with which they sometimes 
come in contact. David probably supported 
his men during the eight months of his stay 
in this region by acting against those tribes, 
and making spoil of their cattle. And as 
* B.C. 1072. 



250 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



their hand was against every man, it was 
natural that every man's hand should be 
against them; the rather, as we may be 
sure, from their general conduct, that they 
lost no occasions of oppressing or plundering 
the people inhabiting, or pasturing their 
flocks, along or near the southern frontier. 
Thus the presence of David's troop was, for 
that reason, a great advantage to the shep- 
herds, as he had by this time secured suf- 
ficient control over his men to oblige them 
to respect the property of the Israelites. 
And this was, at least in the feelings of the 
people, no small thing in a body of men, 
living abroad with swords in their hands, 
and obliged, as they were, to collect their 
subsistence in the best way they could. 
Among those who were advantaged by this, 
none were more so than the shepherds of 
Nabal, a man of large possessions in Carmel. 
When David returned northward, he heard 
that Nabal was making great preparations 
for the entertainment of his people during 
the shearing of his 3000 sheep ; and being 
then greatly pressed for provisions, he sent 
some of his young men to this person to 
salute him respectfully in hie name, and to 
request some small supply out of the abun- 
dance he had provided. Now in point of 
fact, according to all usage, Nabal ought to 
have anticipated this request, as soon as he 
learned that one who had protected his pro- 
perty in the wilderness was then in his 
neighbourhood. But Nabal was " churlish 
and evil in his doings," and irritable as a 
dog. This character, his insulting answer 
to the message fully supported : — " Who is 
David 1 and who is the son of Jesse 1 There 
be many servants now-a-days that break away, 
every man from his master. Shall I then 
take my bread, and my water, and my flesh, 
which I have killed for my shearers, and 
give it to men w r hom I know not whence 
they be ? " When this answer was brought 
back to David, he was highly enraged, and 
ordered his men to gird on their swords ; 
and with 400 of them (leaving 200 to protect 
the baggage) he set forth with the rash and 
cruel purpose of destroying the churl and 
all that belonged to him. The provocation, 
although very great, and not likely to be 



overlooked by a military man, was certainly 
not such as to justify this barbarous design. 
Its execution was, however, averted by 
Abigail, the wife of Nabal, who is described 
as " a woman of good understanding, and of 
a beautiful countenance." Those shepherds 
who had been in the wilderness with the 
flocks, and were sensible of the value of that 
protection which David's troop had rendered, 
greatly disapproved of their master's con- 
duct. They therefore reported the whole 
matter to their mistress, who appears to have 
had that real authority in the household 
which a woman of sense always has had in 
the house of even a brutal fool. She con- 
curred in their apprehensions as to the pro- 
bable consequences, and with a promptitude 
which bears out the character given to her, 
decided on the proper steps to avert them. 
While Nabal was eating and drinking, even 
to drunkenness, at the feast, she made up 
an elegant and liberal present, consisting of 
200 loaves of bread, two skin-bottles of wine, 
five measures of parched corn, five sheep 
ready dressed, 200 clusters of raisins, and 
200 cakes of figs ; and having placed all this 
on asses, she set forth with suitable atten- 
dance to meet the enraged hero. She soon 
met him and his men, on full march to Car- 
mel ; and after rendering him her most re- 
spectful homage, she spoke to him with such 
fine tact and prudence, that his passion grew 
calm under her hand ; and she convinced 
him- that the deed which he contemplated 
would cause the weight of innocent blood to 
lie heavy on his conscience in after days. 
Being thus made to feel that he had allowed 
the bitterness of a blockhead's insult to sink 
too deeply in his soul, he felt really thank- 
ful that his fell purpose had been inter- 
rupted: — Blessed be Jehovah, the God of 
Israel," he said, " who sent thee this day to 
meet me; and blessed be thy advice, and | 
blessed be thou, who hast kept me this day 
from coming to shed blood, and from aveng- 
ing myself with mine own hand." 

Abigail returned to her husband and the 
next day acquainted him with the steps she j 
had taken, and the imminent danger into I 
which his churlishness had brought him and j 
his. The view which was presented to his ■ 



CHAP. I.] 



SATJL. 



251 



mind of the evil which had hung over his 
head, struck him with such intense dread 
and horror, that in a few days he died of a 
broken heart. When this came to the ears of 
David, who had been much charmed by the 
good sense and beauty of Abigail, he sent to 
her, and she consented to become his wife. 
He had previously married Ahinoam of Jez- 
reel. after Saul had given Michal to another. 
Polygamy was not expressly forbidden by 
the law ; neither did it receive any sanction 
therefrom. It was a matter of existing usage 
with which the law did not interfere; al- 
though it discouraged the formation, by the 
kings, of such extensive harems as the kings 
of the East have been wont to possess; and 
both David and his son Solomon had ample 
occasion to lament those besotting passions 
which led them to neglect this injunction, as 
well as to learn that there is in this matter 
an obvious social law which cannot with im- 
punity be transgressed. This there will be 
other occasions to show. 

Soon after this David removed to his 
former place of shelter, in the wilderness of 
Ziph. While he remained there, Saul justi- 
fied the doubts which the son of Jesse, who 
well knew his character, entertained of the 
continuance of his good resolutions; for he 
again came to seek him at the head of 3000 
men. But this only gave David another 
opportunity of evincing the true and gene- 
rous loyalty of his own character. For one 
night, while the king lay asleep, in the 
midst of his men, with his spear stuck in the 
ground at his head, to mark the station of 
the chief, David entered his camp, attended 
by Abishai (brother to the subsequently 
celebrated Joab), and, without being noticed, 
penetrated to the very spot where the king 
lay. Abishai thought this a fine opportunity 
of ending all their troubles with the life of 
their persecutor ; and begged David to permit 

I him to transfix the sleeping king with his 
spear. But to the pious hero, " a divinely- 

j appointed king, although his enemy, was a 
sacred person. To lay violent hands on him, 
and to open a way to the throne by regicide, 
was a crime which he justly abhorred. What 
God had promised him he was willing to 
wait for, till He who had promised should 



deliver it to him in the ordinary course of 
his providence."* He therefore checked 
the misdirected zeal of Abishai, and with- 
drew with him, taking away the spear which 
was planted at Saul's head, and the vessel of 
water which stood there for his use. David 
then went and stationed himself at the edge 
of an opposite cliff, overlooking the camp of 
Saul, and calling by name to Abner, the 
cousin and chief commander of the king, 
told him he was worthy of death for the 
careless manner in which he guarded the 
royal person. As he went on reproaching 
Abner, Saul, as he expected, recognised his 
voice, and guessing that he had again been 
spared when in his power, called out, "Is 
this thy voice, my son David?" and was 
answered, " It is my voice, my lord, king! " 
David then proceeded with much energy, 
but in the most respectful language, to 
remonstrate against the treatment he received, 
and produced the evidence of the spear and 
water-jug, as evincing the value of the king's 
life in his eyes. The result was the same as 
it had been on a similar occasion before: 
Saul's heart was touched. He acknowledged 
that he had " played the fool, and had erred 
exceedingly;" and after blessing David, 
returned to Gibeah. 

David had before this formed the intention 
of again withdrawing to the Philistines ; for 
in his remonstrance with Saul he had laid 
the responsibility of this measure upon his 
persecutors, — " If Jehovah hath stirred thee 
up against me, let him accept an offering; 
but if they be the children of mem cursed 
be they before Jehovah, for they have driven 
me out this day from abiding in the inherit- 
ance of Jehovah." He must not be allowed, 
however, thus easily to rid himself of the 
responsibility of so ill-advised and desperate 
an expedient, in which he neglected to ask 
counsel of God, but followed the impulse of 
his own apprehensions ; and from the natural 
and obvious consequences of which he could 
only escape by acts of equivocation, hypo- 
crisy, and ingratitude which do no honour 
to his name. However, we are to regard 
David, in all this portion of his life, as a 
learner, as one who was in the course of 
* Jahn, i. 103. 



252 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IT. 



being trained to rule wisely, by various 
disciplines, distresses, and errors ; — for even 
the errors of conduct into which men fall, 
by having placed themselves in a false posi- 
tion through too confident a reliance on 
their own judgment, are not among the least 
profitable experiences which they obtain, 
and which go towards the ripening of their 
minds. But, undoubtedly, it had been better 
for David, and more becoming, had he 
remained in his own country, relying upon 
the protection of that good providence by 
which he had hitherto been preserved. 

On reaching Gath, with his 600 men, 
David was well received by the king, who 
appears to have been the same Achish in 
whose presence he had formerly played the 
madman. The Hebrew chief soon took occa- 
sion to request the Philistine king to assign 
him some town in which he might reside 
apart with his people; and the king, with 
generous and unsuspecting confidence, made 
over to him, to his full and exclusive pos- 
session, the small border town of Ziklag, 
which was situated not far from the brook 
Besor. Here he resided one year and four 
months, or until the death of Saul. From 
this place he undertook excursions against 
the ancient predatory enemies of Israel, the 
Amalekites, the Geshurites, and the Gezrites, 
who roved about in Arabia Petreea, on the 
sea-coast as far as Pelusium, and on the 
southern frontier of the tribe of Judah. In 
all these excursions he utterly destroyed 
man, woman, and child, and took possession 
of the cattle and apparel, of which their 
wealth consisted. The exterminating cha- 
racter which he gave to this warfare, was to 
prevent the Philistines from learning that 
he had been acting against their allies and 
friends ; and he always pretended to Achish 
that his expedition had been against the 
Israelites and their allies, by which he 
established himself firmly in the confidence 
of that king. For the cool manner in which 
the son of Jesse poured out innocent blood 
to cover a deliberate and designing false- 
hood, we have no excuse to offer. He must 
bear the blame for ever. 

In those days the Philistine states joined 
their forces for war against Israel; and 



David, having, by his pretences, impressed 
upon Achish the conviction that he now 
detested his own people and was detested by 
them, was driven to the dreadful alternative 
of either taking the field with the Philistines 
and fighting against his brethren, or else of 
appearing ungrateful to Achish, and perhaps 
of occasioning the destruction of his family 
and himself. But from this difficulty he 
was extricated by the not unreasonable 
jealousy of the other Philistine princes, who 
expected he might turn against them in the 
battle in order to reconcile himself to his 
master. Achish was much hurt at such 
suspicions against one on whom he so per- 
fectly relied, but was reluctantly obliged to 
dismiss him from the expedition. 

On returning to Ziklag, David found the 
city pillaged and reduced to ashes. The 
Amalekites, Geshurites, and Gezrites, had 
taken the opportunity of his absence in 
another direction thus to avenge themselves 
for his former inroads upon them. They did 
not, however, retaliate to the full extent; 
for although they took the men and women 
who were in it captive, " they slew not any. 
either great or small, but carried them 
away." David's two wives were among the 
captives. His men were frantic at the loss 
of their families and substance, and at first 
talked of stoning their leader, whom they 
regarded as at least the remote cause of this 
calamity. But they w r ere at last appeased, 
and set out in pursuit of the spoilers, not- 
withstanding the fatigue occasioned by their 
previous march. Two hundred of the men 
w r ere unable to proceed farther than the 
brook Besor ; and David, leaving them there, 
continued the pursuit with the remaining 
four hundred. On their way they fell in 
with a man half dead with illness, hunger, 
and thirst. Having refreshed him with food 
and drink, they learned that he was an 
Egyptian, a slave to one of the party 
they pursued; but that having fallen ill 
three days before, his master had left him — 
to live or die, as might happen — and that 
since then no bread or water had passed his 
lips. He gave an account of the operations 
of the horde ; and, when pressed, agreed to 
conduct the Hebrew party to the spot at 



CHAP. I.] 



SAUL. 



253 



which he knew that they intended to repose. 
When that spot was reached, the nomades 
were enjoying themselves in full security, as 
they supposed themselves beyond the reach 
of pursuit, and could not know that David 
would have returned to Ziklag so soon. 
They were thus easily overthrown ; and not 
only did the Hebrews recapture all that 
they had taken, but gained besides so con- 
siderable a booty, that David was enabled to 
send presents to all the rulers in Judah who 
were favourable to his cause. 

The 400 men who had continued the pur- 
suit were unwilling to share the additional 
spoil with the 200 who had tarried by the 
brook Besor, although willing to restore 
their own property to them. But David 
took the opportunity of establishing the 
useful principle that all the persons engaged 
in an expedition should share equally, what- 
ever part they took in it ; or, in other words, 
that those whose presence protected the 
baggage should be equally benefited by a 
■victory with those who went to the fight. 

The present campaign of the Philistines 
against the Israelites was one of those large 
operations which nations can in general only 
undertake after long intervals of rest. There 
seems, indeed, during the reign of Saul, to 
have been always a sort of desultory and 
partial warfare between the two nations ; 
but it had produced no measure comparable 
to this, which was intended to be decisive, 
and was calculated to tax to the utmost the 
resources of the belligerents. When Saul 
surveyed, from the heights of Gilboa, the 
formidable army which the Philistine had 
brought into the plain of Esdraelon — that 
great battle-field of nations — his heart failed 
him. Presentiments of coming events cast 
deep shadows over his troubled mind. He 
sought counsel of God. But God had forsaken 
him — left him to his own devices — and 
answered him " neither by dreams, nor by 
urim, nor by prophets." 

The crimes of Saul arose from his disloyalty 
to Jehovah, in his reluctance to acknowledge 
Him as the true king of Israel. But as his 
God, he worshipped him, and had no tendency 
towards those idolatries by which so many 
subsequent kings were disgraced. All idolatry 



and idolatrous acts were discouraged and 
punished by him. In obedience to the law* 
he banished from the land all the diviners 
and wizards he could find. But now, in his 
dismay, he directed his attendants to find 
out a woman skilful in necromancy, that he 
might seek through her the information 
which the Lord refused to give. One was 
found at Endor, a town not far from the 
camp in Gilboa ; and to her he repaired by 
night, disguised, with two attendants, and 
desired her to evoke the spirit of Samuel, 
that, in this dread emergency, he might ask 
counsel of him. Whatever might be the 
nature of the woman's art, and her design in 
undertaking to fulfil his wish, — whether she 
meant to impose on Saul by getting some 
accomplice to personate Samuel, who had 
only been dead two years, and whose person 
must have become well known to the Israelites 
during his long administration, — or whether 
she expected a demoniacal spirit to give him 
an answer ; it appears from a close examina- 
tion of the text, that, to the great astonish- 
ment of the woman herself, and before she 
had time to utter any of her incantations, 
the spirit of Samuel was permitted to appear, 
in a glorified form, and ominously clad in 
that mantle in which was the rent that 
signified the rending of the kingdom from 
the family of Saul. When the figure appeared, 
the king knew that it was Samuel, and bowed 
himself to the ground before him. From 
that awful and passionless form he heard 
that the doom declared long since was now 
to be accomplished ; — to-morrow Israel should 
be given up to the sword of the Philistines 
— to-morrow Saul and his sons should be 
numbered with the dead. At these heavy 
tidings, the king fell down as one dead, for 
he had touched no food that night or the 
preceding day, and was with difficulty 
restored to his senses and refreshed by the 
woman and his attendants. 

The next day all that had been foretold 
was accomplished. Israel fled before the 
Philistine archers; and Saul and his sons, 
unable to stem the retreating torrent, fled 
also. The three sons of the king, Jonathan, 
Abinadab, and Melchi-shua, were slain. 

* Deut. xviii. 10, 11. 



254 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IT 




[Body of Archers.] 

Saul himself was grievously wounded by the 
archers; and that he might not fall alive 
into the hands of the Philistines and be 
subjected to their insults, he desired his 
armour-bearer to strike him through with 
his sword ; and when that faithful follower 
refused, he fell upon his own sword : and the 
example was followed by the armour-bearer, 



when he beheld his lord lying dead before 
him. "So Saul died, and his three sons, 
and his armour-bearer, and all his men, that 
same day together." 

The next day, when the Philistines came 
to collect the spoils of the slain, they found 
the bodies of Saul and his three sons. The 
indignity with which they treated the 
remains of these brave men has no previous 
example. They cut off their heads, and 
hung their bodies to the wall of the town of 
Bethshan, near the Jordan. Their heads 
and armour they sent into Philistia, as 
trophies of their triumph, by the hand of the 
messengers who were despatched to publish 
it in their temples and their towns. The 
bodies of Saul and his sons were soon stolen 
away by night from the wall of Bethshan, 
by some valiant men of Jabesh, on the 
opposite side of the river, where a grateful 
remembrance was cherished of the king's 
first military exploit, whereby the people of 
that town were delivered from the loss of 
their liberty and their eyes. To preclude 
any attempt at the recovery and continued 
insult of the bodies, the people burnt them, 
and buried the collected bones and ashes 
under a tamarisk-tree. 



CHAPTER II. 

DAYID. 



On the third day of David's return to Ziklag 
a man arrived in haste, with his clothes 
rent, and earth upon his head, and laid at 
the feet of David the crown and armlet 
which Saul had worn. He told, truly, that 
Israel had fled before the Philistines, and 
that Saul and his sons were slain; but 
thinking to win royal rewards from the son 
of J esse, he boasted that he had slain Saul 
with his own hand. The truth was probably 
that he had found the body of Saul in the 
night after the battle, and had taken from 



it the royal insignia which he brought to 
David. His expectations were grievously 
disappointed ; for David, believing his state- 
ment, caused him to be put to death, as one 
who had not feared to slay the Lord's 
anointed. The man was an Amalekite. 
David mourned and fasted for the desolation 
of Israel, and he lamented the death of his 
beloved Jonathan, and even of Saul, in a 
most affecting and beautiful elegy, which we 
may here introduce as a specimen of the 
poetical compositions of one whose rank 



CHAP. II.] 



DAYID. 



255 



j among the poets of the Hebrews is fully 
1 equal to that which he occupies among their 
Icings * : — 

a 0, antelope of Israel ! pierced on thy high 
place ! 

How are the mighty fallen ! 

Tell it not in Gath: 
Publish it not in the streets of Askelon ; 
Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, 
Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised 
triumph. 

Ye mountains of Gilboa, on you be no dew, 
Xor rain, nor fields of first-fruits ; 
Since there hath been vilely cast away, 
The shield of the mighty, the shield of Saul, 
The armour of him anointed with oil. 

From the blood of the slain, 
From the fat of the mighty, 
The bow of Jonathan was not held back, 
Xor did the sword of Saul return in vain. 

Saul and Jonathan ! 
In mutual love were they in life united, 
And in their death they were not separated. 
Swifter than eagles, stronger than lions 
were they; 

Te daughters of Israel weep over Saul, 
Who clothed you pleasantly in scarlet, 
And put golden ornaments upon your robes. 
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of 
battle ! 

J onathan, slain on thy own mountains ! 
I am grieved for thee, Jonathan, my 

brother ! 
Very dear to me wast thou : 
Wonderful was thy love to me, 
Surpassing the love of women. 

How are the mighty fallen ! 
And the weapons of war perished ! " 

That he mourned even for Saul, will only 
be attributed to hypocrisy by those who are 
themselves incapable of such magnanimity, 
an3 are determined to forget that David, 
during the life of his persecutor, always 
respected him as a king appointed by God, 
and twice spared him when he had his life 
completely in his power. 

With the approbation of the Lord, whom 
he consulted, David now removed, with his 
family and friends, to Hebron, where the 
rulers of the tribe of Judah, with views 

* The version now given is that of Boothroyd, altered 
in some of the lines. 



| altogether theocratical, awarded the sceptre 
to him, as one whom God had already 
designated as king. David was at this time 
thirty years of age. 

But no other tribe concurred with Judah 
in this important step. On the contrary, all 
the other tribes elected Saul's only surviving 
son, Eshbaal, as he was originally named t, 
but nicknamed Ishbosheth (a man of shame), 
from his weakness and incapacity, which, it 
would appear, saved his life, by precluding 
him from being present at the battle in 
which his brothers perished. This measure 
was probably promoted by that radical 
jealousy between the tribes of Judah and 
Ephraim, which prevented the latter (which 
took the lead among the other tribes) from 
concurring in the appointing a king of the 
rival tribe, or indeed from heartily sympa- 
thising in any measure which that tribe 
originated. But the prime agent in this 
schism was Abner, the commander of the 
army, who had drawn off the remnant of the 
defeated army to the other side the Jordan, 
and there, at Mahanaim, proclaimed Ishbo- 
sheth king. Abner was a bold and able, but 
unprincipled man ; and doubtless expected 
to govern in the name of his feeble nephew. 
And he did so. 

For two years no hostile acts between the 
two kingdoms took place. But war was at 
length provoked by Abner, who crossed the 
Jordan with the intention to subdue the 
tribe of Judah to the authoritv of Ishbo- 
sheth. David sent Joab to meet him ; and 
the opposing forces met near the pool of 
Gibeon. But the men on each side felt that 
they were all Israelites, and were reluctant 
to fight against each other. The two generals, 
therefore, thought of a device which has 
often been employed in the East, and else- 
where, to excite tribes or nations to battle, 
when relationship or other causes made 
them reluctant or wanting in zeal. Twelve 
men on each side were matched to fight 
against each other between the two armies ; 
and so well were they matched that they no 
sooner came within reach of one another, 
than each man seized his antagonist by the 
head and sheathed his sword in his body, so 

t 1 Chron. xiii. 33, ix. 39. 



256 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



that they were all killed upon the spot. 
This kindled the opposing forces, and a 
desperate and most sanguinary battle fol- 
lowed. It ended in the defeat of Abner, 
who was himself obliged to flee for his life. 
As he fled he was singled out by Joab's 
brother Asahel, " who was as light of foot as 
a wild roe;" and he pursued him, without 
allowing himself to be drawn aside by other 
objects. He was close at the heels of Abner, 
when the latter looked back, and finding 
who it was, he became most anxious to avoid 
such a blood-feud as would arise between 
him and Joab, in case he slew his brother, 
even in his own defence. He therefore 
entreated Asahel to turn back that he might 
not be compelled to smite him to the ground. 
But finding that he was still pursued, and 
that it was impossible to outstrip his pur- 
suer, he struck at him with the hinder point 
of his spear*, and with such force, that the 
weapon passed through him and came out 
behind. The pursuit of Abner and the other 
fugitives was continued by Joab and his 
other brother Abishai until sunset, by which 
time they were got as far as the hill of 
Ammah. Here the Benjamites (always 
valiant, and jealously attached to the house 
of Saul) rallied again under Abner, and 
posting themselves on the rising of the hill, 
stood prepared to make a stout defence ; but 
their general, who was weary of fighting, 
called to Joab, and begged him to put a 
stop to tne slaughter of his brethren, whose 
destruction could not but cause bitterness in 
the end. Although Joab had determined to 
continue the pursuit all night, he had the 
sense to hearken to his advice, and caused 
the trumpet to sound a retreat. After this, 
Abner and his men took the way to Maha- 
naim, and Joab returned to Hebron. Abner 
lost three hundred and sixty men in this 
action, while on David's side only nineteen 
were killed. The war having thus com- 
menced, was continued for several years; 
but it appears to have been a small, irritating 
warfare, which never came to any important 
or decisive engagement between the opposing 

* The spear is armed at the lower end with a pointed 
iron, whereby it is stuck into the ground when the owner 
Is in repose. 



parties. It was, however, attended with this 
result, that the cause of David was gathering 
strength every day, while the house of Saul 
daily became weaker and weaker. Indeed it 
seems to have required all the great talents 
of Abner to keep the kingdom of Ishbosheth 
together. 

Meanwhile David reigned prosperously in 
Hebron. He increased the number of his 
wives to six, by all of whom sons were born 
to him in that placet. In this small king- 
dom his good and prosperous government, 
together with the knowledge that he had 
been divinely appointed to reign over all 
Israel, appears insensibly to have inclined 
the other tribes towards him, by which, 
more even than by war, his cause gathered 
that strength which that of Ishbosheth lost. 
Abner was fully sensible that without him- 
self the kingdom of his nephew would fall to 
pieces, or rather pass quietly into the hands 
of David. He rated his services at their full 
value ; and although we do not ourselves 
see cause to suspect, as some have done, 
that he contemplated taking the crown to 
himself, it is certain that he was not disposed 
to consider himself responsible to the king 
for his conduct, or to allow any of his pro- 
ceedings to be questioned by him. Now 
Ishbosheth had heard that Abner carried on 
a criminal intercourse with one of Saul's 
concubines, named Rizpah : and as, according 
to the usages of the East, the concubines of 
a deceased sovereign became the property of 
the successor in so strong and peculiar a 
sense, that such an act as that imputed to 
Abner might be interpreted into a design 
upon the crownj, or at least was an insulting 
encroachment upon the peculiar rights of 

f- For the purposes of the sequel it may be useful to 
note the names of these wives, and of the sons which they 
bore to David. 1. Ahinoara, of Jezreel, bore Amnon. 2. 
Abigail, the widow of Nabal, bore Chileab, otherwise 
Daniel. 3. Maachah, the daughter of Talmai, king of 
Geshur, bore Absalom and a daughter named Tamar. 4. 
Haggith bore Adonijah. 5. Abital bore Shephatiah. 6. 
Eglah bore Ithream. But as this enumeration is only for 
genealogical uses, it appears likely that the first-born son 
only of these several wives is named. It is improbable 
that they all had one son and none more. Some probably 
had daughters also; but Tamar only is named, as her his- 
tory ultimately became of historical importance. 

£ See instances of this in the case of Absalom (2 Sam. 
xx. 23), and Adonijah (1 Kings ii. 13—25). 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



257 



royalty, even the timid Ishbosheth was 
roused to question Abner on the subject. 
It is not very clear whether the charge was 
true or false ; but it is clear that this over- 
bearing personage was astonished and dis- 
gusted that the king should dare to question 
any part of his conduct. He rose into a 
towering passion : — " Am I a dog's head, 
which, against Judah, do show kindness this 
day unto the house of Saul, thy father, to his 
brethren and to his friends, and have not 
delivered thee into the hand of David, that 
thou chargest me to day with a fault con- 
cerning this woman ? So do God to Abner, 
and more also, except, as Jehovah hath 
sworn to David, even so I do to him ; to 
translate the kingdom from the house of 
Saul, and to set up the throne of David over 
Israel and over Judah, from Dan even to 
Beer-sheba." From this it seems that ever 
Abner knew that he had acted against a 
higher duty, in setting up Ishbosheth in 
opposition to David; but this cannot justify 
the grounds on which he now declared his 
intention to act against him. What he had 
said was no vain threat, although he was 
probably willing afterwards that the son of 
Saul should take it for an unmeaning out- 
! break of passion. He sent messengers to 
| David to enter into a treaty with him, under 
| which he would engage to use Lis great 
influence in bringing all Israel to acknow- 
ledge him as king ; and after this he found 
a pretence for going himself unsuspectedly 
to Hebron to complete the agreement and 
arrange the steps to be taken. David had 
sent to Ishbosheth to desire him to restore 
, to him his wife Michal, whom Saul had given 
to another. He had a perfect right to make 
this demand, if so inclined, — the rather as 
j she had thus been disposed of against her 
j own wish ; but we may suppose that he was 
| particularly induced to reclaim her at this 
I juncture, in consideration of the satisfaction 
j the measure was likely to give to those 
j attached to the family of Saul. As this 
i claim was doubtless supported by Abner, it 
was granted ; and having obtained an order 
I to demand her from her present husband, 
| that personage himself undertook to escort 

1 her to David. From this transaction it would 

1 ,- 



seem that the war had latterly been allowed 
to die away, although without any concession 
or treaty having been made on either side. 
That he was escorting the daughter of Saul 
to David, proved to Abner a favourable 
opportunity, on his way, of explaining his 
present sentiments to the elders of the tribes 
through which he passed ; especially to those 
of Benjamin, which was naturally the most 
attached to the house of Saul, while his own 
influence in it was the greatest. He dwelt 
strongly on the public benefits which might 
be expected from the government of one 
who had been expressly nominated by Je- 
hovah to the kingdom ; and such a represen- 
tation, coming from such a quarter, coupled 
with the favourable dispositions towards 
David which had grown up during his reign 
in Hebron, was attended with such effect, 
that Abner was authorised to make overtures 
to him in behalf of the tribes which had 
hitherto adhered to the house of Saul. 

Abner was received with great distinction 
and royally feasted by David ; and after the 
business on which he really came had been 
settled to his satisfaction, he departed with 
the intention of inducing the tribes to 
concur in giving David a public invitation 
to take the crown of Israel. 

Joab had been absent from Hebron during 
this visit of Abner ; but he. returned im- 
mediately after Abner had departed, and 
was deeply displeased when he learned what 
had occurred. Through the energy of his 
character, his abilities and experience in 
the affairs of peace and war, his influence 
and popularity with the army, which was 
under his command, and his unquestioned 
devotion to the interests of David, this man 
had great authority with the king. His 
standing, indeed, in the kingdom of Judah, 
had much resemblance to that of Abner in 
the other kingdom ; nor were their characters 
altogether unlike. In the points of difference 
the advantage was on the side of Abner; 
for his experience in military and public 
affairs was larger, from which, together with 
his near relationship to Saul and his son 
and the high stations he had occupied under 
them, his influence with the people was far 
freater than that which Joab or any other 



258 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



man in Israel could pretend to; and hence 
his greater power at this time of rendering 
essential services to the king of Judah. 
Abner and Joab also served very different 
masters ; and thus it happened that while 
Abner was, in the public eye, the greatest 
man in the kingdom of Israel, Joab was in 
that of Judah only the greatest man next to 
David. Upon the whole, Abner was the 
only man in the country of whom Joab had 
cause to be afraid, and by whom it was 
likely that his own influence would be super- 
seded in case the two kingdoms were united 
through his instrumentality. It was pro- 
bably more from such considerations than 
any other that his displeasure at the inter- 
course between David and Abner arose. He 
went instantly to the king, and reproached 
him for allowing himself to be imposed upon 
by the able uncle of Ishbosheth, declaring 
his belief that the true object of his visit 
was to obtain such information concerning 
his state and resources as he might after- 
wards employ against him. He then went 
out and sent a messenger after Abner to call 
him back in the name of the king. As he 
returned, Joab took care to meet him near 
the gate, and drew him aside as if to speak 
to him privately, and while he was entirely 
unguarded and unsuspicious, gave him a 
treacherous stab, of which he instantly died. 
The history describes this as an act of blood- 
revenge for the death of his brother Asahel 
by the hand of Abner ; and while allowing 
him the full benefit of this motive, it is hard 
to believe that envy and jealousy sharpened 
not the dagger of the avenger. It must be 
conceded, nevertheless, that the existence of 
a blood-feud between them extenuated if it 
did not justify the act of Joab in the eyes of 
all Israel. It was, in fact, according to the 
strict ideas of that barbarous institution, the 
imperative duty of Joab to shed the blood of 
Abner who had slain his brother ; and that 
Abner himself knew that the death of Asahel 
would be attended with this result, is evinced 
by his anxiety to avoid the fatal necessity of 
slaying his pursuer ; for if the man-slayer is 
known, the avenger is not bound to make 
any distinction as to the circumstances 
under which his relative is slain : and at the 



present day, the one who slays another in 
battle is pursued by the avenger equally 
with the murderer. The extent to which 
the law of Moses had interfered with this 
custom only provided for the safety of the 
man-slayer while in a city of refuge. Hebron 
was a city of refuge ; and if Joab had slain 
Abner within that city, the law would have 
allowed David to treat him as a murderer. 
This Joab knew; and hence his meeting 
Abner at the gate, and drawing him aside 
before he entered the city. These details 
we judge necessary, to show that those who 
most suffered from the death of Abner, and 
abhorred the manner in which it was in- 
flicted, knew that his offence was not punish- 
able by the king or by the law ; and hence 
that it was not merely the rank and influence 
of Joab which prevented David from calling 
him to account for this barbarous deed. 
Perhaps he could not have punished Joab in 
any case ; but it is important to know that 
in the present case, the law, custom, and 
public opinion did not require or permit him 
to do so. 

The resentment of David was nevertheless 
very great. Like other eastern sovereigns, 
he must have been impressed with the evils 
of this custom of blood-revenge, and the 
extent to which it interfered with good 
government; nor was he insensible to the 
insult offered to himself, in the present and 
other instances by "the sons of Zeruiah," 
J oab and Abishai, and the high hand with 
which they wrought their own will. " I am 
this day weak," he said, " though anointed 
king; and these men, the sons of Zeruiah, 
be too hard for me : Jehovah shall reward 
the doer of evil according to his wicked- 
ness." As it was of the highest importance 
to him that he should be clear of any 
suspicion of having had any part in the 
death of Abner, he publicly, " before Jeho- 
vah," declared himself guiltless of the blood 
which had been shed, and invoked the full 
burden of that blood on Joab and on his 
house. He ordered a public act of solemn 
mourning, in which he himself took a pro- 
minent part ; and at the funeral he followed 
the body, as chief mourner, to the grave, 
where he stood weeping, and where he j 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



259 



lamented, in elegiac verse, over the prince 
and great man, who had that day fallen in 
Israel. 

This conduct of David tended still further 
to satisfy and conciliate the tribes attached 
to the house of Saul; and by them the 
niurdei* of Abner was never imputed to him. 
Indeed, the event must, at the time, have 
seemed to himself and others anything but 
advantageous for his cause. But we, who 
have his whole history before us, can see 
that the manner in which he ultimately 
became king over all Israel, by the free and 
unsolicited choice of the tribes, was more 
honourable and safe to him, aud more be- 
coming his divine appointment than the 
same result brought about through the 
exertions of Abner, whose conduct, as between 
David and Ishbosheth, must have seemed 
very equivocal, and could, at the best, have 
been but " traitorously honest." * 

When Ishbosheth heard of Abner's death, 

j (without being aware of the plot in which 
lie was engaged,) he felt that the right arm 
of his kingdom's s:rength was broken. Others 
felt this also: and the conviction that the 
son of Saul could not govern the troubled 
kingdom without Abner, grew stronger every 
day among the tribes, and directed their 
eyes to David as the only person under 

; whom they could expect to realise the 
benefits the nation had expected to enjoy 

i under a regal government. This feeling, 
this tendency of the nation towards David, 
was perceived, even in the court of Ish- 
bosheth; and two of his officers, brothers, 
determined to anticipate the course which 
events were taking, by the assassination of 
their master, expecting by this act to de- 
serve high rewards and honours from the 
king of Judah. Accordingly, they stole into 
his chamber, while, according to the universal 
custom of the East, he slept there during 
the mid-day heat. They pierced him as he 
slept, and then took off his head, with which 
they escaped unperceived, as at that time of 
the day most of the people were asleep. 
The murderers sped to Hebron, and laid the 
head of Saul's son at the feet of David, with 
the words, " Behold the head of Ishbosheth, 

* Bishop Hall. 



I the son of Saul, thine enemy, which sought 
I thy life. Jehovah hath avenged my lord, 
the king, this day, of Saul and of his seed." 
| Astounding to them was the answer, — " As 
I Jehovah liveth, who hath redeemed my soul 
out of all adversity! When one told me 
I saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have 
brought good tidings, I took hold of him 
and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I 
would have given him a reward for his 
tidings ; — how much more, when wicked men 
have slain a righteous person in his own 
house, upon his bed, shall I not therefore 
now require his blood of your hand, and 
take you away from the earth?" And with 
these words he commanded his attendants to 
remove them to an ignominious death. The 
head of Ishbosheth he ordered to be deposited 
in the sepulchre of Abner. 

The kingdom of Israel was now without 
even the appearance of a head, nor was there 
any remaining member of the family of Saul 
whom the most zealous adherents of that 
fallen house could dream of supporting in 
opposition to David. Saul had indeed left 
some sons by concubines, but they were 
living in obscurity, and even their existence 
was scarcely known to the people. Jonathan 
also had left one son, but he was a mere boy 
and lame. He was five years old when Saul 
and his sons perished in the battle of Gilboa, 
and he became lame from a fall which he 
received when his nurse fled with him, as 
soon as the tidings of that overthrow was 
brought to the house of Saul and Jonathan. 
His name was Mephibosheth. 

David had reigned seven years and a half 
in Hebron, when, after the deaths of Abner 
and Ishbosheth, the crown of all Israel 
seemed to devolve upon him, as naturally as 
by an act of succession. It was probably 
the result of an unanimous decision in a 
great council of the eleven tribes, that those 
tribes sent an embassy to David in Hebron 
to invite him to assume the general govern- 
ment of the nation. This they did on the 
grounds of, 1, his military claim, as one who 
had often led them to victory in the days of 
Saul; and, 2, of his theocratical claim, as 
one who had been expressly nominated by 
God to gover Israel. By this we see that 



260 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



the people were on this occasion careful to I 
recognise the theocracy, since they rested 
their preference of him on his having been 
nominated to the kingdom by Jehovah and 
having proved himself worthy of it during 
the reign of Saul. The studious avoidance 
of all notice of the seven years in which the 
tribes had been separately ruled seems to 
intimate a desire that this measure should 
be formally regarded as following the death 
of Saul. David intimated his readiness to 
receive the honour designed for him, and to 
accede to the conditions on which the crown 
was held. The rulers of the eleven tribes, 
therefore, at the head of large bodies of the 
best- trained men in the several tribes, de- 
scribed as " men that could keep rank," 
who were chosen to represent the whole of 
their several tribes in the great national act 
of inauguration, repaired to Hebron to make 
David king. The number amounted to not 
less than 340,000, and the enumeration in 
the Book of Chronicles* is accompanied 
with several remarks, which the scantiness 
of our information concerning the distinctive 
character of the tribes makes interesting. 
It appears that many members of the tribe 
of Judah had adhered to che house of Saul, 
and abode within its dominions; for, on the 
present occasion, 6800 men of that tribe, 
armed with shield and spear, came with the 
others to submit to David. There were j 
7100 Simeonites of valour. The Levites 
! sent 4600 ; and there were 3700 priests, 
headed by Jehoiada, the son of Benaiah ; 
besides whom came Zadok at the head of 
twenty-two chiefs of his father's house. This I 
Zadok, of the old pontifical line of Eleazar, 
is the same who was long after made sole 
high-priest by Solomon to the final exclusion 1 
of the house of Eli ; but, on the present | 
occasion, he is particularly noticed as "a 
: young man, mighty of valour," which shows 
i ■ — as indeed appears in the history — that the 
i pursuits of the Levites, and even of the 
j Aaronites, were not exclusively of an eccle- 
| siastical and civil nature. From Benjamin 
j came 3000 men ; but the greater part of 
this tribe held back, still cherishing a lin- 
gering and futile attachment to the house of 

* 1 Chron. xii. 23, ad fin. 



Saul, the rule of which had given to the ' 
tribe a flattering pre-eminence, which it was 
unwilling to relinquish. The half tribe of 
Manasseh on this side the Jordan sent 
18,000 men ; and the proud tribe of Ephrairn 
testified its concurrence by sending 28,000. 
From Issachar came only 200 men ; but 
these were the chief persons in the tribe, the 
whole of which was at their beck, and would 
have beeu in attendance if required. To 
them is given the marked character of being 
men of political prudence and sagacity, who 
knew better than most men how Israel ought 
to act under the present and other circum- 
stances, and whose support was therefore of 
great value to David.. From Zebulon came 
not fewer than 50,000 men, skilled in the I 
use of all warlike weapons, and "not of 
double-heart," with respect to the object for 
which they came. Naphtali furnished 1000 
captains, and with them 37,000 men, armed 
with shield and spear. Dan supplied 28,600 
able warriors, and Asher 40,000. The tribes 
beyond Jordan, Reuben, Gad, and the half 
tribe of Manasseh, sent, collectively, 120,000 
warlike men. One obvious remark, arising 
from the survey of the?e numbers, is the 
comparative largeness of the proportions 
furnished by the remoter tribes, to the north 
and beyond Jordan. This is, perhaps, ex- 
plained by the absence in those tribes of any 
pretensions for themselves, and of any strong j 
attachment for the house of Saul, which I 
could ' interfere with the heartiness of their 
recognition of the claims of David ; together 
with the operation of the principles which J 
gives to a prophet and great man the least 
degree of honour in and near his own home. 

With this vast body, the flower of the 
Hebrew nation, and representing the whole 
of it, " David made a league in Hebron 
before the Lord," which can be construed 
to have no other meaning than that | 
which has already been indicated in the 
case of Saul, that he bound himself by oath 
to observe the conditions on which he re- 
ceived the sceptre, which are now unknown. 
He was then anointed king, and received 
the homage of his new subjects^ and the 
whole was terminated by a feast to all the 
multitude assembled at Hebron, supplies for 



I 

i CHAP. II.] 



I'AVID. 



261 



which were liberally sent in by all the 
neighbouring tribes. on asses, and on 
camels, and on mules, and on oxen," and 
consisted of meat, meal, figs, raisins, wine, 
oil, oxen, and sheep, in great abundance. 
" For there was joy in Israel." 

The first act of David's reign was to 
undertake the reduction of the fortress of 
Jebus, on Mount Zion, which had remained 
in the hands of the natives ever since the 
days of Joshua, and which, as Josephus 
reports*, had been, from its situation and 
its fortifications, hitherto deemed impreg- 
nable. The Jebusites, therefore, ridiculed 
the attempt, and appear to have placed the 
lame and the blind on the walls, in derision, 
as fully sufficient to keep him out. But 
from the lower city, which was already in 
the possession of the Israelites, there was 
" a gutter," or subterraneous communication, 
with the fortress, by which David introduced 
a party of men and took " the stronghold of 
Zion." In the operations of this siege, such 
ability and conduct was displayed by Joab, 
that he was appointed to the same chief 
command of the armies of Israel, which he 
had previously held in the separate kingdom 
of .Tudah. The fact that David's rule was 
likely, under all circumstances, to find the 
most zealous supporters in his own tribe of Ju- 
dah. probably disinclined him to remove from 
its borders ; and he determined to make his 
new conquest the metropolis of his empire. 
A more centrical situation, with respect to 
all the tribes, would have placed him in the 
hands of the Ephraimites, whose cordiality 
towards a Judahite king might well be sus- 
pected, and in whom little confidence could 
be placed in times of danger and difficulty. 
Similar considerations have dictated the 
choice of a very inconveniently situated 
capital to the reigning dynasty of Persia. 
But although better sites for a metropolitan 
city might have been found in the largest 
extent of Palestine, there were not better 
within the limits to which, for tie reasons 
indicated, the choice of David was confined. 
That the site is overlooked from the Mount 
of Olives, although a great disadvantage in 
the eyes of modern military engineers, was 

* Antiq. v. 2. Josh. xv. 63. 



of little consequence under the ancient 
systems of warfare, and could not counter- 
vail the peculiar advantages which it offtred 
in being inclosed on three sides by a natural 
fosse ( ravines and deep valleys, and termi- 
nating in an eminence, which, while strong 
in its defences from without, commanded the 
town within, and was capable of being 
strongly fortified. The united influence of 
all these considerations appear to have 
determined the preference of David for a 
site which was open to the serious objection, 
among others, of being so remote from the 
northern tribes as to render the legal obliga- 
tion of resort to it three times every year, a 
more burdensome matter to them than it 
need have been had a more centrical situa- 
tion been chosen. 

It is supposed that David first gave the 
name of Jerusalem {the possession of peace) 
to the city, but this is not quite certain. 
On Mount Zion he fixed his residence, and 
erected a palace and other buildings, and it 
was on this account called - 4 the city of 
David." This strong part of the whole 
metropolis ever after remained what may be 
called the royal quarter of the town. 

The Philistines had good reason to dread 
the consequences of the consolidation of all 
the power of the Hebrew tribes in hands of 
such tried vigour as those of David, and 
they deemed it prudent to set upon him 
before he had time to establish himself 
firmly in his kingdom. Their measures 
were so well planned, and so secretly exe- 
cuted, that they appeared suddenly, in 
great force, in the heart of Judaea, and took 
the king's native town of Bethlehem, before 
he was able to make any resistance. Indeed 
the danger of his position was so urgent, 
that he was obliged to withdraw, for present 
safety, with some attached followers, to his 
old retreat in the cave of Adullam. It was I 
here that he happened to express a longing 
desire for a drink of water from that well of 
his native town, at which the thirst of his 
younger days had often been assuaged. 
Hearing this, three of his most valiant and 
devoted men, Joab, Jashobeam, and Eleazar, 
secretly departed, and breaking through the 
host of the Philistines, which was encamped 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



along the valley of Rephaim, brought hint 
the precious fluid for which they had 
perilled their lives. But when the king 
received it, he would not drink, but poured 
it out as a libation to Jehovah. 

Soon after this, David, encouraged by a 
favourable answer from God, fell upon the 
Philistines, and so effectually discomfited 
them in two different onsets, that they were 
never after able to make head against him or 
any of his successors. Thus was one of the 
most irritating thorns in the side of Israel 
most effectually removed. 

And now, when David had a respite from 
war, about the tenth year of his reign*, he 
thought of the ark of God, which had so 
long remained in the house of Abinadab, at 
Kirjath-jeariin, and contemplated its re- 
moval to Jerusalem, that the place which 
had now become the capital of the human 
j kingdom, might also become the capital of 
i the invisible King. The design being re- 
j ceived with approbation by the elders and 
I chiefs of Israel whom he consulted, the king 
prepared for its execution, by despatching ! 
messengers throughout all Israel, to summon 
all the priests and Levites, and to invite as 
many of the people as were so disposed, to 
attend the solemnity. He also prepared a 
tabernacle t to receive the ark on its arrival. 
Accordingly, at the appointed time, the ark 
was removed from the house of Abinadab, 
upon a new cart, attended by David and his 
court, by a large body of priests and Levites, 
who sang and played on various instruments 
of music, and by a numerous concourse of 
people from all parts of the kingdom. The 
irregularity of removing it on a cart gave 
j occasion to an accident, attended with such 
fatal consequences as threw an effectual 
damp upon the joy of the solemnity: for 
the cart being at one place much shaken by 
the oxen, the officious Ozzah, the son or 
grandson of Abinadab, was struck dead 

* Counting from his first becoming king over Judah 
only. 

t The old tabernacle, made in the wilderness, with the 
altar, and all the sacred utensils were, as it appears, at 
Gibeon ; why David erected a new tabernacle, instead of 
removing the former, does not clearly appear; but it is 
probable that it was too large for the place within his new 
palace whish, for the present, he intended it to occupy. 



upon the spot for putting forth his hand j 
to stay the ark, none but the priests being ! 
warranted to touch it under pain of death J. 
This event struck David and the people with i 
such consternation, that the intention of 
taking the ark to Jerusalem was relin- ! 
quished, and it was left in the house of a 
Levite named Obed-edom, near which the 
circumstance occurred. But about three 
months after, hearing that the blessing of 
Jehovah had very evidently rested on the 
house in which the ark lay, the king 
hastened to complete his design. He per- 
ceived the former improprieties, and directed 
that the priests should now bear the ark j 
upon their shoulders ; and the whole so- : 
lemnity was placed under the direction of 
Chenaniah, the chief of the Levites, who 
was found to be best acquainted with the | 
proper observances. This was a great day ; 
in Israel. Nothing was omitted by which 
the occasion could be honoured. In the ! 
presence of that sacred symbol of the 
Divine King, David laid aside his royal I 
mantle, and appeared in such a garb as the j 
Levites wore, with and before whom he 
went, as one of them ; and as they sang and 
played the triumphant song, which he had ! 
composed for the occasion, he accompanied 
them with his renowned harp, and danced 
to the joyful sounds it gave forth. Michal, 
the daughter of Saul, beheld this from a 
window, when the procession was approach- 
ing its destination ; and she, imbued with , 
some of the royal notions which had been | 
fatal to her father and his house, despised i 
him in heart for acting so far beneath what 
she conceived to be the dignity of the king 
of Israel. And when he came home, she 
could not refrain from allowing vent to this 
I feeling : the reply of David was spirited and 
I proper, declaring that it was before Jehovah, I 
; the true King of Israel, that he had laid 
aside the king, and made himself one with 
J the people. And if this were to be vile, as 
; she deemed, " I will yet be more vile than 
thus, aud will be base in mine own sight." 

David now instituted a regular and or- | 
derly attendance upon the ark and its taber- | 
nacle. But the regular services of religion j 

+ Num. iv. 15. 



CHAP. II.] 



263 | 



were still performed at Gibeon, where the 
old tabernacle and altar remained, and 
which was still therefore the place of con- 
course to the nation at their great festivals. 
Here the priests rendered their services, 
under Zadok. The solemn removal of the 
ark, and its dignified repose in the city of 
David, were well calculated to make an im- 
pression upon the multitudes who were 
present on that occasion, and awaken their 
slumbering zeal for Jehovah. These favour- 
able and becoming dispositions the king 
wished to confirm and strengthen ; and for 
that end made suitable regulations in the 
services of the priests and Levites, and this 
especially by animating and instructive 
Psalms, which were composed, partly by 
himself, and partly by other gifted persons. 
They were sung not only by the Levites at 
all the sacrifices, but also by the people 
while on their way to the national altar, to 
' attend the feasts. A very precious collec- 
| tion of these compositions has been pre- 
I served to our own day in the Book of 
I Psalms, which has in all subsequent ages 
! ministered much edification and comfort to 
i a large portion of mankind. By such in- 
structive means David, without coercive 
measures, brought the whole nation to forget 
I their idols, and to worship Jehovah alone; 
and thus also their religion became honour- 
able, even in the eyes of foreigners, and 
acceptable to many of them. The above is 
the first occasion on which Zadok is men- 
tioned as high-priest. But after this, 
throughout the reign of David, he and 
Abiathar are often named separately or 
together, as both bearing that character — a 
singular innovation, resulting probably from 
circumstances over which the king had little 
control. It seems likely that after Saul 
had slain the priests of Ithamar's line at 
Nob he restored the pontificate to the line 
of Eleazar, in the person of Zadok; while 
David and his people, during his wandering 
and his reign in Judah, had been accus- 
tomed to look to Abiathar, the escaped son 
of Ahimelech, as the high-priest ; and that 
on his accession to the throne of Israel, he 
found the people so accustomed to regard 
Zadok as high-priest, that he thought it 



j proper and prudent to recognise him in that 
j character, without depriving Abiathar of 
! the consideration he had previously enjoyed. 
If this explanation be correct, Zadok would 
have had this advantage over Abiathar, that 
| he had actually discharged the regular 
functions of the high-priesthood at the 
tabernacle, which the other had never an 
opportunity of doing. It is probably on 
this account that wherever the two names 
occur together, that of Zadok is placed 
first. 

About five years after this, and the fif- 
teenth of David's reign, when the king had 
finished and inhabited his palace of cedar, 
" and God had given him rest round about 
from all his enemies," he meditated a design 
of building a Temple to Jehovah, in place 
of the temporary tabernacle which he had 
provided. This design he mentioned to the 
prophet Nathan, to whom it seemed so ob- 
viously proper that he gave it much com- 
mendation and encouragement. But the 
night following, a message from God to 
David was delivered to him. This message 
declared it seemly that the Temple of God 
should be built by a man of peace ; but his 
life had been spent in warfare, and he had 
shed much blood. He was therefore directed 
to leave the accomplishment of his plan to 
his son and successor, whose reign should be 
one of peace. Nevertheless, it was well for 
David that this intention had been formed , 
for the Lord, to testify his approbation of 
this and other evidences of his zeal, and of 
his attachment to the principles of the theo- 
cracy, promised to make his name as great 
as the names of the great ones who are on 
the earth; and, far beyond this, the Lord 
promised to build him a house, by establish- 
ing the succession in his house, and by 
granting to his posterity an eternal king- 
dom. The gratitude with which this pro- 
mise was received by David seems to show 
he had some conception of its extensive 
import. He went, and seating himself most 
reverently on the ground, before the ark, 
poured forth the strong expression of his 
gratitude. Now it is evident that under an 
express promise of this nature, all suc- 
ceeding kings of the line of David were 



264 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 




[Various modes of sitting.] 



virtually chosen and appointed by Jehovah, 
according to the essential law of the govern- 
ment. 

As the Israelites were always victorious 
in war, while they were faithful to their 
God and to the principles of the theocracy, 
so now the arms of David prospered in what- 
ever direction they were turned. Indeed it 
is scarcely, until his reign, that the national 
character of the Hebrews can be deemed to 
have recovered of the wounds which it had 
received in Egypt ; and we find among them 
little military skill, and as little valour or 
fortitude. But from this time forward, 
trained to war and victory by David, they 
may be recognised as a truly courageous 
people, possessing among them as much 
military skill, science, and discipline, as any 
other nation of the same rank and age 
could claim. 

The neighbouring and rival nations had 
soon cause to learn that a new king reigned 
in Israel. The time was come for the old 
enemies, who had so often inspired the 
Israelites with dread, to be afraid in their 
turn; and even the more distant foreign 
princes, whose assistance they procured, had 
cause to repent of provoking an enemy more 
puissant than themselves. It was now the 
turn of the Philistines to receive the yoke 
to which they had accustomed Israel. At- 
tacked in their own country, and beaten on 
all hands, they were brought under tribute 
and subjection. The Moabites were more 
heavily dealt with : to secure his conquest, 
David thought it necessary to act with a 
severity not usual with him ; for he put to 
death one half of those who were taken 
with arms in their hands : and although it 
was then, or had been not long previously, 
usual for the nations to put all the armed 
men to death, this deed strikes us as harsh, | 



from comparison with the milder general 
character of David's own warfare, and can 
only be explained by reference to some pecu- 
liar circumstances with which we are un- 
acquainted. 

In the ancient promises to the Hebrews, 
the limit to which, in their palmy state, 
their victorious arms should extend, had 
been as clearly defined as the limit of their 
own proper territory. And the distinction 
here incidentally mentioned, between the 
limit of the proper country destined for their 
own occupation, and that of the subject ter- 
ritory which should be acquired, is of 
considerable importance, and should not be 
overlooked or confounded as it often has 
been. The limit of conquest was fully 
reached by David. 

Eastward this limit was to extend to the 
Euphrates. Of the kings who reigned in the 
intermediate country, one of the most power- 
ful was Hadadezer, king of Zobah. This 
sovereign, whose dominion extended eastward 
to the Euphrates, was defeated by David in 
the first battle, and lost 20,000 infantry, 
7000 horsemen, with their horses, and 1000 
chariots of war. Of the chariots, the king 
of Israel preserved a hundred, with horses 
for them ; but mindful that the law of the 
kingdom forbade the accumulation of horses, 
all the others were destroyed. The Syrians 
of Damascus, who were allies (perhaps tribu- 
taries) of Hadadezer, and came to his assis- 
tance,, shared his fate. Hadad, their king, 
was vanquished, with the loss of 22,000 men, 
and David brought his territory under sub- 
jection to his sceptre. These two victories 
carried the eastern limit of his conquests to 
the Euphrates. Josephus adduces the testi- 
mony of a native historian, Nicolaus, of 
Damascus, in confirmation of the testimony 
which the Hebrew writers have left. From 
this it seems that the kingdom, of which 
Damascus was the capital, had grown very 
powerful under this Hadad, who might, in- 
deed, be considered as its actual founder; 
but after various engagements with king 
David, was finally overthrown in a great 
battle near the Euphrates, in which he per- 
formed deeds worthy of his high name. 
Josephus himself, in conformity with the 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



265 



Scriptural account, relates that after David 
had reduced to his obedience Damascus and 
all Syria, having strong garrisons in every 
place where they seemed necessary, he re- 
turned in triumph to Jerusalem, where he 
consecrated to God the golden shields which 
had been borne by the royal guard of Hada- 
dezer, from whose cities he also brought 
much spoil of brass for the service of the 
future temple. 

While David was engaged in these vic- 
tories, the southern frontier of his conquests 
was, according to ancient promises, extended 
southward to the Red Sea. This was the 
work of Joab's valiant brother, Abishai, who 
defeated the Edomites in "the Valley of 
Salt," at the southern extremity of the Dead 
Sea, and then carried his victorious arms 
into the mountains, the inclosed valleys, and 
the rocky wildernesses of Mount Seir, leaving 
garrisons to secure the advantages he had 
gained. 

David was too well acquainted with the 
law, to attempt to incorporate any of these 
conquests as integral parts of the Hebrew 
territory. He appears in most cases to have 
left the internal government of the con- 
quered states in the hands of the native 
princes, who were required to render annu- 
ally a certain amount of tribute, consisting, 
for the most part, of such articles as their 
country afforded in the most abundance, or 
which they had the best means of procuring 
or producing. The delivery of such tribute 
from subject states, under the name of pre- 
sents, was anciently as it is now, an occasion 
of great pomp and ceremony, which, on 
another occasion, we shall more particularly 
notice. The obedience of the more distant 
conquests was secured by garrisons, which do 
not seem to have been judged necessary in 
those nearer countries which the mere vi- 
cinity of the conquering power might suf- 
ficiently control. 

Thus David literally became a " king of 
kings," and his fame extended into far coun- 
tries. Some states which had been at hos- 
tilities with the states conquered by him 
sent splendid embassies, with valuable gifts, 
to congratulate him on his successes. Among 
these, Toi, the king of Hamah, upon the 



Orontes, who had been at war with Hada- 
dezer, is particularly mentioned. He sent 
his own son Joram "to salute" and "bless " 
king David, and to deliver costly gifts, such 
as vessels and utensils of gold, silver, and 
fine brass. All the surplus wealth thus ac- 
quired from the states he conquered, or from 
those which sought his friendship and 
alliance, was treasured up by him for the 
great work which he had so much at heart, 
and which his son was destined to execute. 

But of all David's foreign alliances, the 
earliest and most valuable was that with 
Hiram, king of Tyre. This had been formed 
very soon after David had taken Jerusalem 
and defeated the Philistines, and seems to 
have been sought by Hiram; for it will be 
remembered that David was famous in the 
closely-neighbouring states before he became 
king; and no doubt not only his eminent 
public qualities, but his remarkable personal 
history, was familiar not less to the Phoeni- 
cians than to the Philistines. And although 
an enterprising commercial and skilful 
manufacturing nation, like them, would be 
disposed to look down upon a people so 
inferior to themselves as the Hebrews in the 
finer and larger arts of social life, — military 
talents and success, and such heroic qualities 
as the character of David offered, have never 
yet failed to be appreciated, wherever found. 
Hiram "was ever a lover of David," and the 
offered alliance must have been the more 
gratifying to him as it came before " his 
fame went out into all lands, and the Lord 
brought the fear of him upon all nations.*' 
This alliance was one of mutual advantage. 
Tyre possessed but a narrow strip of mari- 
time territory, the produce of which, if sedu- 
lously cultivated, would have been very in- 
adequate to the supply of its teeming popu- 
lation and numerous fleets. But besides 
this, the absorbing devotion of the Phoeni- 
cians to commerce and the arts rendered 
them averse to the slow pursuits of agri- 
culture, the products of which they could so 
much more easily obtain by exchange against 
the products of their foreign traffic and their 
skill. To them, therefore, it was a most in- 
valuable circumstance, that behind them lay 
a country in the hands of a people who had 



266 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



none of the advantages which were so much 
prized by themselves, but who had abundance 
of corn, wine, oil, and cattle to barter for 
them. An alliance cemented by such re- 
ciprocal benefits, and undisturbed by territo- 
rial designs or jealousies, was likely to be 
permanent; and we know that it tended 
much to advance the Hebrews in the arts 
which belong to civilized life, and to promote 
the external splendour of this and the en- 
suing reign. In the present instance Hiram 
supplied the architects and mechanics, as 
well as the timber (hewn in Lebanon), 
whereby David was enabled to build his 
palace of cedar, and to undertake the other 
works which united the upper and lower 
cities, and rendered Jerusalem a strong and 
comely metropolis. 

In the midst of his success and glory, the 
memory of Jonathan was still very dear to 
David. He caused inquiry to be made 
whether any of his family remained, to whom 
he might show kindness; he then first heard 
of his lame son Mephibosheth, and caused 
him to be conducted to Jerusalem. The 
afflicted young man was received with great 
kindness by the king ; who restored to him 
the lands which had belonged to Saul, for 
the support of his household, but desired 
that he would himself be a constant guest at 
the royal table, even as one of the king's own 
sons. This generous treatment, with the 
continued kindness which he afterwards re- 
ceived, won entirely the open heart of Jona- 
than's son. He became strongly attached to 
the person and interests of David, whose 
higher qualities he regarded with admiration 
and reverence. 

It was probably in the period of peace and 
glory which followed the victories of David 
over all the enemies of Israel, that he em- 
ployed himself in the organization of the 
government. The very important part which 
he took in giving to all the departments of 
the government the form and character which 
he desired it to bear in future times, has, it 
seems to us, been rather overlooked and 
undervalued. For, in truth, David was the 
real founder of the Hebrew monarchy ; and 
in that character his great abilities appear 
not less prominently than in the various 



other endowments by which he was so emi- 
nently distinguished from the mass of man- I 
kind. But his measures will more suitably 
engage our attention in the concluding por- 
tion of this chapter than in the present 
place, in which, however, it seemed desirable i 
to point out the period to which his principal 
operations may with the greatest probability 
be referred. 

During the days of his adversity, when 
persecuted by Saul, David had been treated 
by Nahash the king of Ammon with some 
kindness, of which he cherished a very 
grateful remembrance. When, therefore, he 
heard of his death, he sent an embassy to 
condole with the new king, Hanun, upon the 
loss of his father, and to congratulate him 
upon his peaceable succession. But this 
prince was led by his courtiers to regard the 
ambassadors as spies, and dared to give them 
such treatment as was then, and would be at 
this clay in the East, regarded as the most 
ignominious which any men could receive. 
He caused their beards to be shaved, and 
their long garments to be cut short at their 
buttocks, and in this condition sent them 
away. When David heard of this grievous 
insult to him through his ambassadors, he 
was filled with indignation. He sent mes- 
sengers to meet these personages, and to re- 
lieve them from the necessity of appearing ; 
at his court in their present degraded con- 
dition, by directing them to remain at j 
Jericho until the renewed growth of their ! 
beards might enable them to appear without | 
shame. As the insult was too gross to be 
allowed to pass unpunished, David ordered 
Joab to march with an imposing force 
against the Ammonites. Meanwhile that 
people had not been idle ; but fully aware of 
the probable effect of their ungenerous con- 
duct, and not confiding in their own strength, 
they engaged the assistance of some of the 
neighbouring princes of Syria — in fact, 
"hired" them as mercenaries, being the first 
example of the kind which history offers. 
The force thus obtained from four Syrian j 
princes amounted to 33,000 men, who came ' 
and encamped before Medeba in the land of j 
Ammon. The force of the Ammonites them- 
selves marched out of the town when the : 



CHAP. H.] 

army of Israel appeared. Joab with his 
usual address hastened to prevent the junc- 
tion of the two armies, and himself turned 
against the Syrians, while his brother J 
Abishai kept the Ammonites in cheek. The 
Syrians were speedily put to flight by J oab ; j 
and when the Ammonites saw this, they also j 
fled before Abishai, and hastened into the 
city. 

In a second campaign, David himself 
marched against a powerful army composed 
not only of the Syrians, but of Assyrians 
from beyond the Euphrates, whose assistance 
had been procured by Hadadezer, who seems 
now to have determined on a last and grand 
effort to recover and secure his independence. 
This formidable army was under the com- 
mand of Shobach, the general of Hadadezer, 



267 



and were encamped at Helam, near the Eu- 
phrates, where David found them. In the 
terrible battle which ensued the Israelites 
were victorious ; and that day they destroyed 
700 chariots, 7000 horse, and 40,000 foot, 
being about half the force which the Syrians 
on both sides the river had been able to 
bring into the field. By this decisive victory 
the Syrian nations were completely subdued ; 
and the Ammonites were henceforth left to 
their own resources. 

The next campaign against that nation 
David left to the conduct of Joab, remaining 
himself at Jerusalem. Joab marched into 
the land of Ammon, and after ravaging the 
country, laid siege to the metropolitan city 
of Kabbah, or Rabbath-Ammon, which for 
some time held out against him. 




[R. 

There was little in this war to occasion 
much anxiety in the king, who remained 
quiet at Jerusalem, where, in an evil and un- 
guarded hour, his inordinate desires brought 
him very low, and entailed much anguish 
and sorrow on his future reiorn. 



One afternoon the king arose from his 
mid-day sleep, and walked on the terraced 
roof of his palace * from the commanding 

* There have been many grave remarks and sermons 
upon the consequences of idleness, as exemplified in this 
instance, and so forth. Now there is no idleness in the 



268 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



height of which he unhappily caught a view 
of a woman bathing. This was the beautiful 
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, 
who was then serving under Joab at the 
siege of Kabbah. The king sent for her, and 
she became with child by him. Afflicted at 
this event, which was so calculated, by be- 
traying the adulterous connection, to bring 
upon the woman the ignominious death which 
the law demanded, if the husband should 
think proper to demand her punishment, 
David sent to desire Joab to send him to 
Jerusalem, as if with news of the war, hoping 
that his presence about this time would 
screen, or at least render doubtful, the effects 
of his own crime. But Uriah, either, as he 
professed, thinking the gratifications of home 
inconsistent with the obligations of his mili- 
tary service, or suspecting the fidelity of his 
wife, avoided her during his stay, and re- 
mained publicly among the king's atten- 
dants. Disappointed in this device by the 
proud honour or caution of Uriah, the king 
concluded that the life of Bathsheba and his 
own character could only be secured by his 
death. This therefore he contrived, in con- 
cert with the unprincipled Joab, in such a 
maimer as to make him perish by the sword 
of the Ammonites, although this could not 
be effected without involving several other 
men in the slaughter. David concluded his 
complicated crime by sending back to Joab, 
through the messengers who brought this 
intelligence, a hypocritical message of con- 
dolence : — " Let not this thing displease 
thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as 
another." And then, to fill up the measure 
of his successful guilt, he openly took Bath- 
sheba to wife, after the days of her mourning- 
were expired ; and she bore him a son. 

But the deed which David had done with 
so much privacy, thinking to escape human 

case, or anything to blame David for, but the sin into 
which he fell. In warm climates the cool morning hours 
are highly favourable to exertion, and therefore the ori- 
entals rise early to employ them ; to compensate for which, 
and to obtain the total quantity of sleep which nature re- 
quires, they lie down again during the heat of the day, 
when, if they were awake, the relaxing warmth would 
make exertion difficult. Taken in all, the orientals do not 
sleep more, if as much, as we do; but they find it con- 
venient and suitable to have two short sleeps instead of a 
single long one; and for this they do not deserve to be 
considered! indolent. 



detection, " displeased Jehovah ;"' and He 
sent Xathan the Prophet to reprove him. 
This he did with much tact, in a well known 
and very beautiful tale of oppression and 
distress*, so framed that the king did not at 
the first perceive its application to himself, 
and which worked so powerfully upon his 
feelings that his anger was kindled against 
the man, who " had no pity,*' and he de- 
clared not only that he should, as the law 
required, make a fourfold restitution; but, 
with a severity beyond the law of the case, 
pronounced a sentence of death upon him. 
Instantly the prophet retorted, " Thou art 
the man ! " In the name of the Lord, he 
authoritatively upbraided him with his in 
gratitude and transgression, and threatened 
him that the sword which he had privily em- 
ployed to cut off Uriah should never depart 
from his own house, and that his own wives 
should be publicly dishonoured by his neigh- 
bour. 

Convicted and confounded, David instantly 
confessed his guilt — "I have sinned against 
Jehovah!" — and for this speedy humilia- 
tion, without attempting to dissemble or. 
cloak his guilt, the Lord was pleased to remit 
the sentence of death which he had pro- 
nounced on himself, and to transfer it to the 
fruit of his crime. The child died ; and the 
Rabbins remark that three more of Da vid's 
sons were cut off by violent deaths, thus com- 
pleting as it were the fourfold retaliation for 
the murder of Uriah which he had himself 
denounced. 

" The fall of David is one of the most 
instructive and alarming recorded in that 
most faithful and impartial of all histories, 
the Holy Bible. And the transgression of 
one idle and unguarded moment pierced him 
through with many sorrows and embittered 
the remainder of his life, and gave occasion 
for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme on 
account of this crying offence of ' the man 
after God's own heart.' When he only cut 
off the skirt of Saul's robe, his heart smote 
him for the indignity thus offered to his 
master ; but when he treacherously cut off 
a faithful and gallant soldier, who was fight- 
ing his battles, after having defiled his bed, 

* See the parable, 2 Sam. xii. 1 — I. 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



269 



his heart smote hiin not, at least we read not 
of any compunction or remorse of conscience 
till Nathan was sent to reprove him. Then, 
indeed, his sorrow was extreme; and his 
Psalms, composed on this occasion, express 
in the most pathetic strains the anguish of a 
wounded spirit, and the bitterness of his 

penitence* Still, the rising again of 

David holds forth no encouragement to sin- 
ners who may wish to shelter themselves 
under his example, or natter themselves with 

I the hope of obtaining his forgiveness ; for 

j though his life was spared, yet God inflicted 
upon "him those temporal punishments which 
the prophet had denounced. The remainder 
of his days were as disastrous as the begin- 
ning had been prosperous." + 

These things happened about the eight- 
eenth year of David's reign, and the forty- 
eighth of his age. 

Soon after this, Joab, always zealous for 
the honour and credit of his master, though 
not himself an unambitious man, sent to ac- 
quaint David that he had taken the royal 
quarter of the city of Rabbah ; and as this 
contained the sources from which the rest 
was supplied with water, it was not possible 
that it could much longer hold out. He 
therefore desired that the king would come 
with a suitable reinforcement and carry the 
town, that his might be the glory of bring- 

i ing the war to a conclusion. David did so. 
The spoil taken in this metropolis was im- 
mense; and among it was the crown of the 

| king, of gold set round with jewels, and worth 
a talent of gold, which may be reckoned at 
nearly 6000^. This was "set on David's 
head;" but whether as appropriating it to 
his own future use as king of Israel, or as 
the act of a conqueror to denote the trans- 
ference to himself of that sovereignty over 
Amnion which the native princes had hitherto 
enjoyed, is not quite evident. It is certain 
th it such of this cruel and arrogant people 

■ as were taken in Rabbah, were treated with 
unusual severity — not, indeed, by their being 
put to torturing deaths, as the ambiguous 
terms of the text have suggested, but by 
their being reduced to personal servitude, 

* See Pi. xxxii., li., ciii. t Hales, ii. 341—343. 



and devoted to the most laborious employ- 
ments which existed among the Hebrews, 
being such as those of sawing and cleaving 
wood, of harrowing the ground, and of 
labouring in the brick-fields. 

This was prosperity; as was, not long 
after, the birth of another son from Bath- 
sheba. This son was Solomon, who, long 
before his birth, and long before his mother 
was known to David, had been pointed out, 
by name, as " the man of peace," who was to 
succeed him in the throne, and through 
whom his dynasty was to reign in Israel. 

But the commencement of the evils threat- 
ened upon the house of David w T as not long- 
withheld. Amnon, the eldest of his sons, 
conceived a violent passion for his half-sister, 
Tamar, the full sister of Absalom. By a 
feigned sickness he procured her presence in 
his house, and delayed not to declare to her 
his ciiminal desires; and finding that he 
could not persuade her to compliance, he by 
force effected her dishonour. Then passing 
suddenly from a criminal excess of love to 
an equal excess of hate, he expelled her 
ignoininiously from his house. Tamar, in 
her grief, rent her virginal robe and threw 
dust upon her head, and sought the asylum 
of her brother Absalom's house ; for, accord- 
ing to the ideas of the East, the son of the 
same mother is, more than even the father, 
the proper person to protect a female and to 
redress her wrongs. No man could be more 
haughty and implacable than Absalom; but 
he was also deeply politic ; and while he re- 
ceived the unhappy Tamar with tenderness, 
he desired her to conceal her grief, seeing 
that a brother was the cause of it, and to 
spend her remaining days in retirement in 
his house. He made no complaint on the 
subject, and, young as he was, so well con- 
cealed his deep resentment, that even Amnon 
had not the least suspicion of it. "When the 
neAvs of this villainous fact came to the ears 
of David, it troubled him greatly ; but being 
greatly attached to Amnon, as being his 
eldest son and probable successor in the 
throne, he neglected to call him to account 
or to punish him for his transgression. This, 
we may be sure, increased the resentment of 
Absalom, and perhaps laid the foundation of 



I 270 

his subsequent alienation from, and dislike 
to, his father. 

Absalom waited two years before he found 
an opportunity of giving effect to his long 
and deeply-cherished purposes of vengeance. 
It seems that David allowed separate esta- 
blishments to his sons very early. We find 
before, that both Amnon and Absalom had 
separate houses, and now we learn that 
Absalom (and doubtless his brothers) had a 
distinct property to support his expenses. 
For at this time he was about to hold a grand 
sheep-shearing feast in Baalhazor, to which 
he invited the king and all his sons. As 
Absalom had hoped, David declined, on the 
ground of the expense which his presence 
would occasion to his son ; but all the princes 
went, and among them and the chief of them 
was the eldest, Amnon. Now Absalom felt 
that the day of his vengeance was come; 
and while he received his company with dis- 
tinction, and royally entertained them, he 
gave secret orders to his servants to fall upon 
Amnon, and slay him, even at the table, on 
a given signal from himself. This was done. 
Amnon was slain while his heart was warmed 
with wine ; on which the other princes, ex- 
pecting perhaps the same fate, made all 
haste to get to their mules, and fled to Jeru- 
salem. Their arrival relieved the king from 
the horror into which he had been plunged 
by a rumour that all his sons had been slain ; 
but still his indignation and grief were very 
great. Absalom himself fled the country, 
and found refuge with his maternal grand- 
father, Talmai, the king of Geshur, with 
whom he remained for three years. 

During this time the grief of David for 
the murder of Amnon was gradually as- 
suaged, and his heart insensibly turned with 
kindness towards Absalom, to whom he 
always had been much attached, and who 
was now his eldest son, and who might seem 
to have the more claim on his indulgence 
and sympathy on account of his exclusion 
from the succession to the throne, to which 
by birth he deemed himself entitled. Joab 
was not slow to perceive the turn which the 
king's feelings were taking, and was desirous 
of bringing about a reconciliation between 
David and Absalom ; but not daring to speak 



[book iv. ! 

openly to the king himself, in the first in- 
stance, he engaged a shrewd woman of 
Tekoah to come before the king with a fic- 
titious tale of distress, which, as in the case 
of Nathan's story, might be made instruc- 
tively applicable to the circumstances. The 
woman played her part to admiration ; but 
when she began to make her application, the 
king at once guessed that she had been 
prompted by Joab ; and this being admitted | 
by the woman, the king turned to that per- 
sonage, who was present all the time, and, 
glad that what was secretly his own desire ! 
was thus made to appear a concession to the 
urgent request of that powerful servant, he 
said, " Behold, now, I have done this thing ; 
go, therefore, bring the young man Absalom j 
again." He accordingly came back to Jeru- 
salem ; but his father declined to see him on 
his return; and he remained two years in 
Jerusalem without appearing before the 
king. 

At the end of that time Absalom was 
again, through the interference of Joab, 
admitted to the presence of his father, who 
embraced him and was reconciled to him. 

It would seem that during his retirement, 
Absalom had formed those designs, for the I 
ultimate execution of which he soon after 
began to prepare the way : this was no less 
than to deprive his father of his crown. As 
David was already old, Absalom would pro- 
bably have been content to await his death, 
but for peculiar circumstances. If David 
properly discharged his duty, he must have 
led his sons to understand that although the 
succession to the throne had been assured to 
his family, the ordinary rules of succession 
were not to be considered obligatory or 
binding, inasmuch as the Supreme King 
possessed and would exercise the right of 
appointing the particular person who might 
be acceptable to him. In the absence of any I 
contrary intimation, the ordinary rules might 
be observed ; but, according to the principles 
of the theocratical government, no such rules 
could be of force when a special appointment 
intervened. It was already known to David 
and could not but be known or suspected by 
Absalom, that not only he but some other of 
the king's sons were to be passed over by 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



j CHAP. II.] 

such an appointment, in favour of Solomon, 
J to whom, by this time, the king probably 
J began to pay attention as his successor. The 
; fact that even the ordinary law of primo- 
geniture as applied to the government, had 
not yet been exemplified among the Hebrew?, 
must have tended to increase Absalom's 
uncertainty of his own succession to his 
father. Beside?, in contending for the 
crown while his father lived, he had but one 
competitor, and that one fondly attached to 
him ; whereas if he waited until his father's 
death, he might have many vigorous com- 
petitors in his brothers. These, or some of 
them, were probably the considerations in 
which the designs of Absalom originated. 
But these designs were not merely culpable 
as against his own father, but as an act of 
rebellion against the ordinations of the 
theocracy, since they involved an attempt to 
appropriate by force that which God had 
otherwise destinated, or which at least was 
co be left for his free appointment. The 
ultimate success of Absalom would therefore 
have utterly subverted the theocratical 
principle which still remained in the con- 
stitution of the Hebrew state. 

At the first view, such an enterprise, as 
against such a man as David, and by his 
own son, must have seemed wild and hope- 
less. But in the contest between youth and 
age, — between novelty and habit, — between 
the dignity and authority of an old king, 
and the ease and freedom of one who has 
only popularity to seek, — the advantages are 
not all in favour of the old governor. 
Besides, it seems that there was much latent 
discontent among the people, arising in a 
considerable degree from that very confidence 
in the justice and wisdom of the king by 
which his throne ought to have been secured. 
It is the duty of an oriental king to admi- 
nister justice in his own person, and that 
duty is not seldom among the heaviest of 
chose which devolve upon him. This grew 
in time to be so sensibly felt, that ultimately 
among the Hebrews, as in some oriental and 
more European states, the king only under- 
took to attend to appeals from the ordinary 
tribunals. But under the former state of 
things, the people will rather bring their 



271 

causes before a just and popular king than 
to the ordinary judges ; and he in conse- 
quence is so overwhelmed with judicial 
business, that there remain only two alter- 
natives — either to give up all his time to 
these matters, to the neglect of the general 
affairs of the nation; or else to risk his 
popularity by fixing a certain time every 
day for the hearing of causes, whereby some 
of the suitors must often wait many days 
before their causes can be brought under his 
notice. This hindrance to bringing a case 
immediately before the king is calculated to 
relieve him by inducing the people to resort 
to the inferior judges from whom prompt 
justice might be obtained ; but on the other 
hand, it is well calculated to endanger his 
popularity -with the unthinking multitude, 
who deem their own affairs of the highest 
importance, and attribute to his neglect or 
indolence the delay and difficulty which 
they experience. David made choice of the 
latter alternative, and suffered the inevitable 
consequences. 

Absalom was not slow to perceive the 
advantage this was to him, or to neglect the 
use which might be made of it. He had 
other advantages : he was an exceedingly 
fine young man, admired by all Israel for 
his beauty, and particularly celebrated for 
the richness and luxuriance of his hair. This 
was no small matter among a people so open 
as were the Hebrews to receive impressions 
from the beauty, or tallness, or strength of 
their public men. It was also probably a 
great advantage to Absalom, as against 
David, and which would have availed him 
against any of his brothers, had any of them 
been older than himself, that he was mater- 
nally descended from a race of kings. 

Soon after the reconciliation with his 
father, Absalom began to live with great 
ostentation; taking upon him much more 
state than his station as the eldest son of 
the crown required, and more probably than 
his father exhibited as king. He had 
chariots, and a guard of horsemen, and never 
appeared in public but attended by fifty 
men. This, by contrast, the more enhanced 
the condescension and affability which his 
purposes required him to exemplify. It was 



DAVID. 



272 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



his wont to make his appearance very early 
in the morning, in the way that led to the 
palace-gate ; and when any man who had a 
law-suit came to the king for judgment, 
Absalom would call to him and inquire with 
much apparent interest from what town he 
came, and the nature of his suit before the 
king; he would then condole with him on 
the state of affairs which made it so difficult 
to obtain redress and justice, and would 
wind up with the passionate exclamation, 
"Oh that I were made judge in the land, 
that every man who hath any suit or cause, 
might come unto me, and I would do him 
justice ! " And then when any man passing 
by, came to make his obeisance to the king's 
son, Absalom would put forth his arms, and 
take hold of him, and embrace him like a 
brother. " And on this manner," says the 
narrative, " did Absalom to all Israel that 
came to the king for judgment: so Ab alom 
stole the hearts of the men of Israel" And it 
is important to note that the men whose 
hearts he thus " stole " were inhabitants of 
all the different parts of the land, who would 
afterwards carry to their several homes the 
impressions they had received. 

At last, four years after his reconciliation 
to his father, Absalom judged his plans ripe 
for execution ; he therefore obtained the 
king's permission to go to Hebron, under the 
pretence of offering there a sacrifice which 
he had vowed during his residence at Geshur. 
At this place he had appointed the chiefs of 
his party to meet him, while others, who 
were dispersed through all the tribes, were 
ordered to proclaim him king, as soon as 
they heard the signal given by the sound of 
the trumpet. At his arrival in Hebron, he 
sent for Ahithophel who readily came; and 
the defection of that great politician, who 
had been the chief of David's councillors, 
and whose reputation for wisdom was so 
great, that his opinion on most subjects was 
respected as that of an oracle, gave much 
strength to the cause of Absalom, and 
attracted to Hebron numbers of influential 
men from all quarters of the land. 

Alarmed at this formidable rebellion so 
close to him, David hastily took flight with 
his family and servants, leaving ten of his | 



concubine-wives in charge of the palace. He 
paused outside the town to survey the 
faithful few who were prepared to follow | 
his fortunes. Among them were the high- 
priests, Zadck and Abiathar, with the priests 
and Levites bearing the ark. These David 
directed to return with the ark into the city : 
"If I shall find favour in the eyes of Jehovah, 
he will bring me again, and show me both 
it, and his habitation. But if he thus say, 
C I have no delight in thee;' behold, here 
am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto 
him." From this and other expressions, 
similarly humbled and resigned to the dis- 
pensations of providence, it appears that he 
recognised in this unnatural conspiracy 
against him a portion of the judgments 
which the prophet had been authorized to 
denounce against him for his iniquities in 
the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba. David 
also pointed out to the high-priests that 
they might render him much service by 
remaining in the city, from which they 
might secretly transmit intelligence and 
advice to him through their sons, Aliimaaz 
and Jonathan. 

The whole of the two corps of body- 
guards (the Cherethites and Pelethites), as 
well as the GOO Gathites, were ready to 
attend the king. The last-named body 
appear to have been native Philistines of 
Gath, whom David had attached to his 
service after the conquest of their country, 
and who had perhaps become proselytes. 

The king attempted to dissuade Ittai, 
their leader, from attending him with his 
men, apparently feeling that, as foreigners 
and mercenaries, they might be rather 
expected to attach themselves to the rising 
fortunes of Absalom. But the answer of 
Ittai was decisive : " As Jehovah liveth, and 
as my lord the king liveth, surely in Avhat 
pla^e my lord the king shall be, whether in 
death or life, even there also will thy servant 
be." 

Having taken this melancholy review of 
his followers, the king went on, " by the 
ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went 
up, and had his head covered, and he went 
barefoot ; and all the people that was with 
him covered every man his head, 



CHAP. II.] DJ 

weeping as they went up," in token of 
extreme sorrow and humiliation. They had 
scarcely reached the summit before David 
was joined by an old and attached friend 
named Hushai, who had been one of his 
council, and who came with his clothes rent 
and dust upon his head, resolved to share in 
the misfortunes of his king. But David, 
well convinced of his attachment, did not 
think it fit to take him with his train ; but 
rather begged him to go and join himself to 
Absalom, where he might render much 
better service by thwarting the counsels of 
Ahithophel (of whose defection he had just 
heard), and by conveying to him, through 
the two high-priests, information of whatever 
resolutions the revolters might take. Hushai 
readily accepted this office, and acquitted 
himself in it with such consummate tact 
and zeal, as not a little contributed to the 
final overthrow of Absalom and his party. 

In his further progress David was joined 
by Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, who 
brought with him some necessary refresh- 
ments, and falsely and treacherously reported 
that his master remained behind, in the 
expectation that the turn which affairs were 
taking might result in the restoration of the 
| house of Saul in his person. David, sensibly 
hurt at this treatment from one who owed 
so much to his kindness and gratitude, 
hastily told Ziba henceforth to regard as his 
own property the lands he had hitherto 
managed for Mephibosheth. Immediately 
after, an incident occurred to confirm the 
impression he had thus received; for near 
Bahurim, a village not far on the eastern 
side of Olivet, he was encountered by one of 
Saul's family, named Shimei, who dared to 
throw at him and his people vollies of stones, 
accompanied by the grossest abuse and bit- 
terest imprecations against David as the 
author of all the wrongs and misfortunes of 
the house of Saul, which he said were now 
in the course of being avenged. All this 
unexpected insult David bore with meekness 
and patience; for when Abishai desired 
permission to punish the man on the spot, 
the king refused; "Behold," he said, "my 
son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh 
my life ; how much more now may this Ben- 



273 



jamite do it] Let him alone, and let him 
curse; for Jehovah hath bidden him. It 
may be that Jehovah will look on mine 
affliction, and that Jehovah will requite me 
good for his cursing this day*" 

Absalom delayed not to march to Jerusa- 
lem. He was surprised and gratified to find 
there Hushai, the old friend of his father, 
and gave him a place in his council. In 
that council the voice of Ahithophel was 
still paramount and decisive. Perceiving 
that many held back or wavered from the 
apprehension that Absalom would hardly go 
to the last extremities against his father, 
and that possibly they might become the 
victims of another reconciliation between 
David and his son, this wily and unprincipled 
statesman advised that Absalom should not 
delay to remove this apprehension by such 
an act as would, in the sight of all the 
people, commit him beyond all hope of a 
pardon or reconciliation to the bad cause in 
which he was engaged. This was that he 
should rear a pavilion on the top of the 
palace (to render it conspicuous from afar), 
into which he should, " in the sight of all 
Israel," enter to the concubine wives whom 
David had left in charge of the palace. This 
atrocious council was followed by Absalom, 
who thus unintentionally accomplished 
Nathan's prophecy. 

The next advice of Ahithophel was that 
not a moment should be lost in crowning 
the success of the rebellion by the death of 
the king, without allowing him time to 
bring his resources into action. To this end 
he offered himself to pursue him at the head 
of 12,000 men; " And I will come upon him 
while he is weary and weak-handed, and will 
make him afraid; and all the people who 
are with him shall flee ; and I will smite the 
king only. And I will bring back all the 
people unto thee: the man whom thou 
seekest is as if all returned — (i.e. thou seekest 
only one man's life) : and the whole people 
shall be in peace." This really sagacious 
advice was much approved by Absalom, who 
perhaps considered that the guilt would rest 
upon Ahithophel; and to the other coun- 
sellors it also seemed good. Hushai was 
absent r and as a high opinion of his prudence 



274 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



was entertained, Absalom sent for him, and 
then told him what Ahithophel had advised, 
and asked whether he thought that advice 
good. Hushai at once saw that David was 
lost, if this plan were not frustrated. He, 
therefore, with great presence of mind, 
adduced several specious arguments against 
it, and in favour of delay; dwelling upon 
the known valour of David and his friends, 
and the serious consequence of any check or 
failure in the first attack. The least repulse 
at such a juncture might be fatal to the 
cause of Absalom. The awe in which they 
all stood of the military talents and courage 
of the old king gave such effect to these 
suggestions, that the counsel of Hushai was 
preferred to that of Ahithophel. Of all this 
Hushai apprised the high-priests, and desired 
them to convey the information to David 
through their sons, together with his advice 
that not a moment should be lost in passing 
to the country beyond Jordan. This message 
was conveyed to David with some danger 
and difficulty by Jonathan and Ahimaaz, 
who had remained in concealment at Ain 
Rogel, outside the city. Neither the in- 
formation nor advice were lost upon the 
king, who instantly marched to the Jordan, 
and passed over with all his people, so that 
by the morning light not one was left in the 
plain of Jericho. 

The far-seeing Ahithophel deemed the 
cause of Absalom to be lost, when he knew 
that the counsel of Hushai was to be followed. 
His pride also could little brook the neglect 
of the advice which he had given, and which 
he had been used to see so reverently 
regarded. On both accounts, he abandoned 
the cause. He went to his own home ; and, 
while he was still wise enough to set his 
affairs in order, was mad enough to hang 
himself. 

David established himself at the town of 
Mahanaim, which, it will be remembered, 
had been the royal seat of Ishbosheth, and 
which appears to have been chosen by him, 
and now by David, on account of the 
strength of its fortifications. To that place 
several principal persons of the country, who 
were well affected to the cause of David, 
brought a timely supply of provisions for 



himself and his men, together with tents, 
beds, and other necessary utensils. An aged 
person of Gilead, named Barzillai, particu- 
larly distinguished himself by his liberality 
on this occasion to the exiled king. 

When Absalom heard that his father was 
at Mahanaim, he crossed the Jordan with an 
army, and encamped in the land of Gilead. 
His army was under the command of Amasa, 
his cousin*. 

David, on his part, reviewed his force, 
which was but a handful of men as compared 
with the large host which Absalom brought 
into the field. He divided it into three 
battalions, the command of which he gave 
to Joab, Abishai, and Ittai the Gathite, 
intending himself to command the whole in 
person. But his people, aware that his 
valued life was principally sought, would 
not hear of it, but insisted on his remaining 
behind at Mahanaim, with a small reserved 
force. As the rest of his adherents marched 
out at the gate, David, who stood there, 
failed not to charge the commanders, in the 
hearing of the men, for his sake to respect 
the life of Absalom. 

A most sanguinary action was soon after 
fought in the forest of Ephraim, wherein the 
rebel army was defeated, with the loss of 
20,000 men, slain in the battle-field, besides 
a great number of others who perished in 
the wood and in their flight. Absalom him- 
self, mounted upon a mule, was obliged to 
flee from a party of David's men towards 
the wood, where the boughs of a thick oak 
having taken hold of his bushy hair, in 
which he took so much pride, the mule 
continuing its speed, left him suspended in 
the air. The pursuing soldiers, seeing him 
in this state, respected the order of the king, 
and forbore to smite him ; but Joab, who 
happened to learn what had occurred, ran 
and struck three darts through his body. 
" Whatever were Joab's crimes, among them 
disloyalty was not to be reckoned. And 
now he gave the most unequivocal proof of 
his unshaken fidelity, in knowingly incurring 
the king's displeasure, to rid him of an 
obstinate rebel against his own father, whom 

* See 1 Chron. ii. 16, 17. But 2 Sam. xvii. 25, makes 
Abigail, the sister of David, the grandmother of Amasa. 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



275 



no forgivenesses could soften and no favours 
could bind, for whom Joab himself had so 
successfully interceded, and was likely there- 
fore to have been otherwise well disposed 
towards Absalom from the mere circumstance 
of having served him."* 

As the death of Absalom ended the cause 
of war, Joab caused the trumpet to sound a 
retreat, to stop the carnage. The body of 
Absalom was taken down, and cast into a 
large pit, and covered with a heap of stones. 
This was not the end or the sepulchre 
expected by this ambitious man, when he 
reared for himself a fair monument " in the 
king's dale," supposed the Valley of Jehosha- 
phat, to keep his name in remembrance, 
because he had no sons, and therefore called 
it by his own name. The partisans of Absa- 
lom were no sooner acquainted with the 
death of their popular chief than they fled, 
every man to his own home. 

Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok the high-priest, 
besought Joab to be allowed to bear the 
tidings of the victory to the king. But as 
Joab knew that David would regard as evil 
any tidings that included the death of his 
son, he, out of regard to Ahimaaz, refused 
his permission, but sent Cushi with the news. 
The other, afterwards persisting in his 
request, was allowed to go also ; and he 
went with such speed that he outran Cushi, 
and was the first to appear before the king, 
who sat at the gate of Mahanaim, anxiously 
awaiting tidings from the battle. The king 
and the father had struggled hard within 
him; the father conquered; and now his 
absorbing desire was to know that Absalom 
was safe. Aware of this feeling, Ahimaaz 
contented himself with reporting the victory, 
leaving to Cushi the less pleasant news ; and 
he, when plainly asked, " Is the young man 
Absalom safe 1 ?" answered, with much dis- 
cretion, " The enemies of my lord the king, 
and all that rise against thee to do thee 
hurt, be as that young man is." On hearing 
this, " the king was much moved, and went 
up to the chamber over the gate, and wept ; 
and as he went, thus he said, • my son 
Absalom ! my son, my son Absalom ! would 

* Hales, ii. 349. 



God I had died for thee, Absalom, my son, 
my son ! ' " And thus he remained in the 
chamber over the gate, with his head covered 
like a mourner, wailing for his son, and 
oblivious to all things else. 

His faithful adherents, who, by venturing 
their lives for hini against fearful odds, had 
that day restored him to his throne, returning 
weary to the city, where they deserved to be 
greeted with thanks and praises, and tri- 
umphal songs, were quite confounded to 
learn this conduct of the king, and slunk 
into the town like guilty people — even like 
defeated men rather than conquerors. As 
very serious consequences might arise from 
this state of feeling, Joab went in to the 
king, and reproved him very sharply for his 
unkingly conduct and untimely wailing, so 
calculated to discourage his truest friends, 
and insisted that he should go forth and 
show himself to the people, and speak kindly 
to them ; For, said he, " if thou go not forth, 
there will not tarry one with thee this night ; 
and that will be worse unto thee than all 
the evil that befel thee from thy youth until 
now." The king could see the prudence of 
this counsel ; and, therefore, curbing his 
strong emotion, he went down to the gate 
and sat there ; on hearing which the people 
hastened to present themselves before him, 
and all was well. 

It might seem the obvious consequence of 
his victory, that David should repass the 
Jordan at the head of his conquering army, 
and resume his throne at Jerusalem. But 
the mass of the people had chosen another 
for their king, and by that act had virtually, 
to the extent of their power, deposed himself ; 
and in such a case it would appear that the 
civil principles of the constitution required 
that he should, in a certain sense, be re- 
elected to the crown by the people, before 
he was entitled to regard himself as king 
over any but such as had continued to 
recognise him in that character. He there- 
fore remained beyond Jordan until the tribes 
should decide to recall him. It seems there 
was a general disposition among the people 
to do this ; they blamed one another for 
their rebellion against the king, and their 
remissness in recalling him ; but all seemed 

t 2 



276 



[book IV. 



to shrink from taking the first step in the 
matter. Judah, from its more intimate 
relations with David, might be expected to 
give the example ; but Judah had been the 
head-quarters of the rebellion ; and it ap- 
pears that Jerusalem was in the occupation 
of Amasa, who, from the extent to which he 
had committed himself in Absalom's re- 
bellion, might judge his case desperate, and 
hence use all his influence to prevent the 
king's return. This state of affairs being 
understood by David, he sent to the high- 
priests, who were still in Jerusalem, charging 
them to remind the elders of Judah of the 
obligation which seemed peculiarly to de- 
volve upon them, and also to gain over 
Amasa by the offer to make him captain of 
the host in the place of Joab. This was 
attended with the desired result; and the 
elders of Judah sent back the answer, " Re- 
turn thou, and all thy servants." On 
receiving this invitation, the king marched 
to the Jordan; and the men of Judah, on 
their part, assembled at Gilgal, to assist him 
over the river, and to receive him on his 
arrival. Among these, and foremost among 
them, were a thousand men of Benjamin, 
headed by Shimei, and including Ziba with 
his fifteen sons and twenty servants. No 
sooner had the king passed the river in a 
ferry-boat, than Shimei threw himself at his 
feet, acknowledged his former crime, but 
trusted that it would be forgiven in con- 
sideration of his being the first in all Israel 
(except Judah) to come forward with a 
powerful party, to promote his restoration. 
In consideration of this circumstance, and, 
what was a greater merit and benefit — that 
his party was from the tribe of Benjamin — 
it would have been a most ungracious act 
had the king been inexorable. He therefore 
pardoned him freely, although some of his 
officers were for putting him to death. For 
the like reason, probably, — that is, for fear 
of disgusting the valuable party to which he 
belonged, and in which he had much in- 
fluence, — the king dared not entirely recall 
from Ziba the grant of Mephibosheth's lands 
which he had hastily made to him. When 
the son of J onathan came to the Jordan to 
meet the king, he made it clear to him that 



he had been slandered by his steward, who 
had purposely neglected to provide him with 
the means of escape from Jerusalem when he 
purposed to join the king in his exile; so 
that, in consequence of his lameness, he had 
been obliged to remain behind ; but, during 
his stay, had remained in retirement, and, as 
a mourner, had neither dressed his feet, 
trimmed his beard, nor changed his clothes. 
Under the circumstances, the king could 
only say, " Thou and Ziba divide the land;" 
to which the reply of Mephibosheth was 
worthy of the son of the generous Jonathan, 
" Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord 
the king is come again in peace unto his own 
house." 

The rich old man of Gilead, Barzillai, who 
had so liberally ministered to the wants of 
David during his exile, came down to the 
Jordan to see him over. The king would 
fain have persuaded him to accompany him 
to J erusalem, that he might have an oppor- 
tunity of rewarding his services ; but Barzillai 
returned the touching reply, "How long have 
I to live, that I should go up with the king 
unto Jerusalem] I am this day fourscore 
years old; and can I discern between good 
and evil ? Can thy servant taste what I eat, 
or what I drink ? Can I hear any more the 
voice of singing-men and singing-women? 
Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a 
burden unto my lord the king ? Thy servant 
will go a little way over Jordan with the 

king : let thy servant, I pray thee, 

turn back again, that I may die in mine 
own city, and be buried by the grave of my 
father and of my mother." He, however, 
recommended the fortunes of his son Chim- 
ham to the care of the king, who accordingly 
took that person with him to Jerusalem. 

From the result, we may doubt the wisdom 
of the separate appeal which David had 
made to his own tribe of Judah, inasmuch 
as his more intimate connection with that 
tribe, by birth and by having reigned over it 
separately for seven years, required the most 
cautious policy on his side, to prevent his 
appearing to the other tribes as the king of 
a party. Now, when he had crossed the 
Jordan, people from all the tribes flocked to 
him to join in the act of recall and re- 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



277 



storation. But when they came to consider 
of it, the other tribes were not willing to 
forgive Judah for having been beforehand 
with them ; or, in other words, that, instead 
of inviting them to join with themselves in 
the act of recall, the elders of Judah, by act- 
ing independently, had enabled themselves 
to exhibit the appearance of more alacrity 
and zeal in the king's behalf, putting the 
other tribes in an unfavourable position by 
comparison. They alleged also their claim 
to be considered, on the ground that the ten 
tribes had tenfold the interest in the kingdom 
to that which the single tribe of Judah could 
claim. The answer of that tribe was the 
most impolitic and provoking that could be 
made. They alleged that seeing the king 
was of their own tribe, " is near of kin to us," 
they had a right to take a peculiar and 
exclusive interest in his recall. This quarrel 
grew so hot, as to strengthen the natural 
disposition of the tribes to regard David as 
the king of the Judahites ; and but a slight 
impulse was wanting to induce them to 
leave him to his own party. This impulse 
was supplied by one Sheba, of the dis- 
contented tribe of Benjamin, who, perceiving 
the state of feeling, blew the trumpet, and 
gave forth the Hebrew watchword of revolt, 
" Every man to his tents, Israel ! " and, in 
the name of the tribes, disclaimed all further 
interest in David, and bade defiance to his 
adherents. The effect of this move, perhaps, 
exceeded his expectation. On a sudden he 
saw himself at the head of all the tribes, 
except that of Judah, which had occasioned 
this defection, and which was left almost 
alone to conduct the king from the Jordan 
to Jerusalem. 

This circumstance, perhaps, supplied to 
David an additional motive for performing 
his secret promise of making Amasa captain 
of the host ; as that person appears to have 
been high in favour with the tribes. But 
most readers will feel displeased that Joab 
should at this juncture — after the brilliant 
displays which he had so lately afforded of 
his loyalty, courage, and prudence — be dis- 
placed in favour of the rebel leader; and 
even if judged by the principles of the East, 
} that every stroke of policy by which some- 



thing may be gained, is a good stroke, 
whatever interests or honour it sacrifices, — 
even judged by this rule, the policy of this 
operation may very much be doubted, as, 
indeed, David himself had soon occasion to. 
suspect. In fact, we agree with Hales, that 
in this David " seems to have acted rather 
ungratefully and unwisely, justifying Joab's 
reproach (on a former occasion), ' thou lovest 
thine enemies and hatest thy friends.' But 
the old grudge and jealousy which he enter- 
tained against ' the sons of Zeruiah,' who 
were above his control, and too powerful to 
be punished, as in Abner's case, combined 
with Joab's disobedience of orders in killing 
Absalom, which he could never forget, nor 
forgive, to the day of his death, seem to have 
got the better of his usual temporising 
caution and political prudence." 

Amasa, the new captain of the host, failed 
to assemble the forces of Judah, to act against 
Sheba, within the time which the king had 
appointed. Whether this arose from want 
of zeal or ability in him, or from the disgust 
of the Judahites at the removal of Joab 
from an office which he had filled with great 
distinction for twenty-seven years, we know 
not. The king was in consequence obliged 
to order Joab's brother, Abishai, to take the 
command of the royal guards, and pursue 
Sheba without delay, before he could get 
into the fenced cities ; for that otherwise he 
might raise a rebellion more dangerous than 
Absalom's. On this occasion Joab went with 
Abishai as a volunteer, followed by the 
company which formed his private command, 
for his zeal for his king and country rose 
paramount above his sense of the disgrace 
which had recently been inflicted on him. 
But when Amasa, with the force he had 
collected, joined them at Gibeon to take the 
command, Joab, under the pretext of saluting 
him as his u brother" slew him, just as in a 
former time he had slain Abner. He then 
took the command himself, causing pro- 
clamation to be made, — " He that favoureth 
Joab, and he that is for David, let him go 
after Joab." He then pursued Sheba, be- 
sieged him in a town to which he had fled, 
demanded his head from the inhabitants, 
and crushed the rebellion. He then returned 



278 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IT. 



triumphant to Jerusalem, self-reinstated in 
his former station, of which David dared no 
more to deprive him. 

About the thirty-fourth year of David's 
reign commenced a grievous famine, which 
continued for three successive years. When 
the sacred oracle was consulted, it declared 
that this was on account of the unatoned 
blood of the Gibeonites, whom Saul, in despite 
of the ancient treaty between that people 
and the Israelites, had cut off. This cir- 
cumstance is not mentioned in the history of 
Saul; but, from the circumstances, it may 
perhaps be collected that Saul, finding the 
difficulty, to which we have adverted more 
than once, of forming a landed property for 
his family, where the land was already 
inalienably parcelled out among the people, 
had, under pretence of zeal for the interests 
of his own people, formed the design of 
utterly destroying the Gibeonites, and, as far 
as he was able, executed that design, giving 
their lands and wealth to his relatives, by 
the survivors of whom they were still pos- 
sessed. As it therefore appeared that the 
calamity which punished this breach of 
national faith could only be averted through 
satisfaction being rendered to the remnant 
of the Gibeonites, David sent to learn what 
satisfaction they required. They, actuated 
by the powerful principles of revenge for 
blood, to which we had such frequent occa- 
sion to advert, refused to take " silver or 
gold," that is, a blood-fine, from the house of 
Saul, but demanded that execution should 
be performed upon seven members of that 
house. Seven members of Saul's family 
were accordingly sought out and given Up 
to them. These were, two sons of Saul by 
his concubine Rizpah, and five grandsons by 
his eldest daughter Merab; Mephibosheth 
(who appears to have been the only other 
member of the family) was held back by 
David, on account of the covenant between 
him and Jonathan. The Gibeonites took 
these persons, and, after having slain them, 
hanged up their bodies on a hill. This was 
against the law, which forbids that a body 
should be kept hanging after the going down 
of the sun on the first day. How long they 
thus remained, is not stated ; but the famine 



had been occasioned by drought, and they 
hung there until the rains of heaven fell 
upon them. It was then made known to 
David that Rizpah, the mother of two of 
them, had spread sackcloth for herself upon 
the rock, and had there remained to protect 
the bodies from the birds of the air and the 
beasts of the field. Touched by this striking 
instance of the tenderness of maternal affec- 
tion, David not only directed the bodies of 
these persons to be taken down, but he went 
[or sent] to Jabesh Gilead, to remove from 
under the oak in that place, the bones of 
Saul and Jonathan, and deposit them, with 
all respect, in the family sepulchre at Kelah 
in Benjamin, together with the remains of 
these unhappy members of their house. 

David has been censured by some writers 
for consenting to the demand of the Gibeon- 
ites ; but we have wasted the pains which, at 
different times, we have taken in expounding 
the doctrine of avengement for blood, if the 
reader has not perceived that the demand of 
the Gibeonites was one which the king could 
not refuse. They might have accepted the 
blood-fine ; but this was optional with them, 
and they were perfectly entitled to refuse it, 
and to demand blood for blood. That the 
persons who were slain had themselves no 
hand in the crime for which they were 
punished is more than we know ; it is most 
likely that they were active parties in it, 
and still more that they reaped the profits 
of it. But even were this not the case, it is 
a well-known principle of blood-avengement 
that the heirs and relatives of the blood- 
shedder are responsible for the blood in 
their own persons, in case the avenger is not 
able to reach the actual perpetrator. That 
David had any interest in getting rid of these 
persons is equally absurd and untrue, for 
they made no pretensions to the crown them- 
selves, nor did others make such pretensions 
for them. Even when the cause of Saul's 
house was most in want of a head, none of 
these persons appeared to advance their 
claims, nor did the warmest partisans of the 
cause dream of producing any of them in 
opposition to David. 

Now that the Israelites had been weakened 
by two rebellions and three years of famine, 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



279 



the Philistines deemed the opportunity fa- 
vourable for an attempt to shake off their 
yoke. They therefore renewed the war about 
the thirty-seventh year of David's reign, but 
were defeated in four engagements, and 
finally subdued. In all these engagements 
the Philistines exhibited their old passion 
for bringing gigantic champions into the 
field. In the first of these engagements, 
David himself, notwithstanding his years, 
shrunk not from the combat with the giant 
Izbi-benob ; but he waxed faint, and was in 
danger of being slain, had not the brave and 
trusty Abishai hastened to his relief, and 
killed the gigantic Philistine. After this 
the people would no more allow David to go 
forth in person to battle, " that thou quench 
not the light of Israel." This war com- 
pletely extinguished the gigantic race to 
which Goliath had belonged. 

The numbering of the people was one of 
the last and most reprehensible acts of the 
reign of David. In itself, an enumeration 
of the population might be not only innocent 
but useful ; it was the motive by which the 
deed was rendered evil. This motive, so 
offensive to God, was obviously supplied by 
the design of forcing all the Israelites into 
military service, with a view to foreign 
conquests ; a design not only pitiable in so 
old a man, but in every way repugnant to 
both the internal and external polity of the 
theocratical government. That the census 
was not, as in former times, taken through 
the priests and magistrates, but by Joab, as 
commander-in-chief, assisted by the other 
military chiefs, sufficiently indicates the 
military object of the census; and if they 
were accompanied by the regular troops 
under their command, as the mention of 
their " encamping" leads one to suspect, it 
may be seen that the object was known to 
and disliked by the people, and that the 
census could only be taken in the presence 
of a military force. Indeed the measure was 
repugnant to the wishes of the military 
commanders themselves, and was in a pe- 
culiar degree abhorrent to Joab, who saw 
the danger to the liberties of the people, 
and gave it all the opposition in his power, 
! and undertook it reluctantly, when he found 



the king adhered to his purpose with all the 
obstinacy of age. 

At the end of nine months and twenty 
days, Joab brought to the king the return 
of the adult male population, which was 
900,000 men in the ten tribes of Israel, and 
400,000, in round numbers, in the tribe of 
Judah alone ; being together 1,300,000. But 
the tribes of Levi and Benjamin were not 
included in this account ; for Joab did not 
finish the enumeration, probably in conse- 
quence of some indications of the Divine 
displeasure in the course of it. According to 
usual proportions, the entire population of 
Israel at this time (without including these 
two tribes) could not well have been less 
than 5,200,000. The same marks of the 
Divine displeasure which prevented the 
completion of the census, were probably 
those which awakened the slumbering con- 
science of David when the return was 
presented to him. He confessed before God 
that he had sinned, and prayed to be 
forgiven. The next morning it was made 
known to him, through the prophet Gad, 
that he had sinned indeed, and that his sin 
was not of such a nature as, with a due 
regard to the public principles of the govern- 
ment, could be allowed to pass without 
signal punishment. The choice of punish- 
ment was offered to him, — seven years of 
famine, three months to be pursued by his 
enemies, or three days of pestilence. The 
humbled monarch confessed the choice to be 
hard, but fixed on the latter alternative, as 
the more equal punishment, and such as 
seemed more immediately under the direction 
of Heaven. Accordingly, Jehovah sent a 
pestilence, which in the course of two days 
destroyed 70,000 men, from Dan to Beer- 
sheba. It was then beginning to visit 
Jerusalem, when God was pleased to put a 
stop to it, at the earnest prayer of David. 
He beheld the commissioned angel stand 
in the threshing-floor of Araunah, a chief 
person among the Jebusites, as one pre- 
paring to destroy. And then he and the 
elders of Israel, all clad in sackcloth, fell 
upon their faces, and the king cried : — " Is 
it not I that commanded the people to be 
numbered'? Even I it is that have sinned 



280 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



and done evil indeed ; but as for these sheep, 
what have they done? Let thine hand, I 
pray thee, Jehovah, my God, be on me, 
and on my fathers house ; but not on thy 
people, that they should be plagued." This 
noble prayer was granted as soon as uttered. 
Through the prophet Gad, he was commanded 
to erect an altar, and offer sacrifices on that 
spot of ground where he had seen the de- 
stroying angel stand. The king accordingly 
bought the threshing-floor from Araunah 
(who would willingly have given it free of 
cost) for fifty shekels of silver*; he then 
hastened to erect an altar, and to offer 
thereon burnt-offerings, and peace-offerings , 
and a miraculous fire which descended from 
the heavens and consumed the victims, gave 
manifest proof of the Divine complacency, 
and so sanctified the spot as to point it out 
for the site of the future temple. The plague 
was stayed. 

David was now advancing towards seventy 
years of age, and it appeared from the de- 
clining state of his health that his latter 
end could not be far off. This made 
Adonijah, his eldest surviving son, deter- 
mine to take measures to secure the throne, 
which, had it been hereditary, would na- 
turally have devolved to him. He doubt- 
less knew that the crown had been assigned 
to his younger brother Solomon, and he°felt 
that this was perhaps his only opportunity 
of asserting what he conceived to be his 
natural rights. Adonijah was a very hand- 
some man, and he had not at any time been 
baulked or contradicted by his father, many 
of whose sorrows arose from his excessive 
indulgence of his children. He now, in 
apparent imitation of Absalom, set up a 
splendid retinue, and courted popularity 
among the people; and he succeeded in 
drawing over to his party Joab, who now at 
last forsook his old master, and Abiathar the 

* This was little more than six pounds of our money. 
There is an apparent contradiction between the account in 
2 Sam. xxiv. 24, and 1 Chron. xxi. 25, which says that 
David gave Araunah 600 shekels of gold by weight (which 
would be no less than 1200J. of our money) ; but this may 
be removed by the supposition that after David knew, by 
the acceptance of the altar erected on the spot, that the 
temple was to be built in this place, he made a further pur- 
chase of a sufficient site for the additional and much larger 
sum just named. 



high-priest, who had shared all his fortunes. 
One day, when matters seemed ripe for the 
further development of his designs, he made 
a grand entertainment at Ain Rogel. the 
fountain in the king's garden, to which he 
invited all the king's sons, with the signi- 
ficant exception of Solomon ; and the prin- 
cipal persons in the state, with the exception 
of those who were known to be in Solomon's 
interest. There he was proclaimed king in 
the usual form, " God save king Adonijah!" 
by the powerful party assembled. 

In this important emergency, Nathan the 
prophet sent Bathsheba to inform the king 
of these proceedings, and afterwards came 
in himself and confirmed her account. By 
both he was reminded of his previous de- 
clarations, that Solomon was to be his 
successor in the throne. The old king was 
roused to his wonted energy by this intelli- 
gence; he instantly appointed Nathan the 
prophet, Zadok the priest, Benaiah, and his 
own guards the Cherethites and Pelethites 
who continued faithful, to take Solomon, 
and conduct him, mounted on the king's 
own mule, to the fountain of Gihon, and 
there to anoint and proclaim him king. 
The ceremony was thus attended with every 
circumstance which could give it authority 
in the eyes of the people, as indicating the 
intention of the king, which, it was now 
well known, was according to the will of 
God. There was the mule, which none but 
David had ever been seen to ride, and which, 
he having habitually ridden, none but a 
king might ride; there was the prophet 
who could only sanction that which he 
knew to be the will of God; there was 
Zadok, with the holy anointing oil from the 
tabernacle; and there were the guards, 
whom the people had been accustomed to 
see in attendance only on the king. The 
whole ceremony was also directed to take 
place on one of the most public and fre- 
quented roads leading from Jerusalem. The 
people were adequately impressed by all 
these considerations and circumstances, — 
they heartily shouted, "God save king 
Solomon ! " The earth was, as it were, rent 
with the rejoicing clamour, mixed with the 
sounds of trumpets and of pipes. The 



DAVID. 



281 



party of Adonijah heard the noise; and 
when informed of the cause, they were all 

I so struck with consternation at the prompti- 
tude and effect of this counter-move, that 
they dispersed immediately, and slunk away 

I every man to his own house. Adonijah, 
seeing himself thus forsaken, and dreading 
nothing less than immediate death, fled to 
the refuge of the altar (erected on the 
threshing-floor of Araunah). Solomon being 
informed of this, sent to tell him that if by 
his future conduct he proved himself a 
worthy man, he would not hurt a hair of 
his head; but at the same time assured him 
that any future instance of a disloyal in- 
tention would be fatal to him. On leaving 
the altar Adonijah went and rendered his 
homage to the new king, after which he was 
ordered to retire to his own house. 

The waning spark of David's life gleamed 
up once again before it Anally expired. He 
availed himself of this to call a general 
assembly of the nation, to ratify the coro- 
nation of Solomon, and to receive the 
declaration of his views and designs. The 
aged king was able to stand up on his feet 
as he addressed the assembly at considerable 
length. Perceiving from the revolts of Ab- 

I salom and Adonijah, into which last some 
of his own stanchest friends had been 

I drawn, that the principle of primogeniture 

; was likely to interfere very seriously with 
the true doctrine of the theocracy, he was 
careful to point out how the sceptre had 
been assigned to Judah, not the firstborn of 
Jacob; and in the tribe of Judah, to the 
family of Jesse, not the first or most pow- 
erful of that tribe ; and of the eight sons of 
Jesse, to David the youngest; and of the 
sons of David, to Solomon, at a time when 
there were living three (if not four*) older 
than he. He then proceeded to state the 
reasons which had prevented him from 
building to the Lord that temple which he i 
had designed, and since this great work had 
been reserved for the peaceable reign of his 
son, he solemnly exhorted him and the na- j 
tion to erect that temple, according to the 
model which he had himself supplied, and | 

* Chileab, the son of Abigail, is not historically named, j 
The probability is that he died early. 



I to contribute liberally themselves towards 
it, in addition to the ample stores and ma- 
j terials, which in the course of his reign he 
j had been enabled to provide. He concluded 
I with a most noble and devout thanksgiving 
[ to the Lord for all the mercies which he 
had shown to himself and to his people ; 
and this, with the rest of his conduct 
on this occasion, shows that whatever were 
now the bodily infirmities of the aged 
king, his better faculties were still in their 
prime. 

Solomon was now again anointed king in 
the presence, and with the sanction of the 
assembly, by Zadok, who himself was now 
declared and recognised as sole high-priest, 
Abiathar being deposed from his partici- 
pation in that dignity on account of his 
having gone over to Adonijah. It is impos- 
sible not to see in all this a strenuous asser- 
tion by David of the theocratical principles 
of the constitution, which rendered conclu- 
sive and final any appointment which the 
Divine King had made, or might make. 
And for this he deserves the more honour, 
as there is good reason to think th t, for 
himself merely, as a father, he would quite 
as soon have seen Absalom or Adonijah on 
the throne as Solomon. Of Abiathar it was 
quite necessary to make an example ; for as 
high-priest he, of all men, ought to have 
been sensible of the obligation of the divine 
appointment, the maintenance of which had 
now become one of the most marked and 
grand prerogatives of Jehovah as King of 
the Hebrews, and the one which was cal- 
culated to keep His superiority present to 
the minds of the people. If this prero- 
gative were allowed to be contemned by the 
high-priest, who should be its most strenuous 
supporter, the people would not be likely to 
hold it in much respect. 

The enthusiasm manifested by the king 
for the object which, for many years past, 
he had so much at heart, kindled a corre- 
sponding zeal in the people, who presented 
liberal offerings for the great work which 
Solomon was destined to execute. 

The following day was spent as a high 
festival. Holocausts of numerous steers, 
and rams, and lambs were offered to 



282 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IT. 



Jehovah ; and also abundant peace-offerings 
on which the people feasted, with great 
gladness, before they departed to their 
homes, ^his was, in fact, the coronation 
feast of Solomon. He, being now twice 
anointed, and formally recognised by the 
people, mounted the throne of his father, and 
administered the government while David 
still lived. 

It was not, however, long before David 
felt that his last hour approached. He then 
sent for his son, to give to him his last 
counsels. He first of all recapitulated the 
gracious promises which God had made to 
him and his posterity, and then reminded 
Solomon that these promises were only, in 
their first and obvious sense, to be under- 
stood as conditional, and depending upon 
their observance of the divine law ; so that 
they might expect their prosperity to rise 
and fall in proportion to their obedience. 
He then proceeded to advise him as to the 
course he should take with reference to 
certain persons whom his own history has 
brought conspicuously under the notice of 
the reader. The predominating influence of 
the sons of Zeruiah had, throughout his 
reign, been very galling to himself, and he 
advised his son not to incur the same griev- 
ance, or to submit to it. As to Joab, he 
had, through policy, been pardoned for ■ his 
part in Adonijah's rebellion, as David him- 
self had, from like reasons, been compelled 
to overlook the crimes of which he had been 
guilty — such as the murders of Abner and 
Amasa : yet should he again offend, Solomon 
was advised to bring him to condign punish- 
ment, by which he would strike terror into 
evil doers, and, more than by any other act, 
evince the strength and firmness of his 
government. 

The pardon which Shimei had asked, be- 
side the J ordan, with a thousand men at his 
back, could not well have been refused ; and 
David had no wish to annul it. But aware i 
of the character of this disaffected and dan- I 
gerous Benjamite, he cautioned Solomon 
against him, and advised him to keep him 
under his eye in Jerusalem, and watch him 
well, that he might have no opportunity of 
stirring up seditions among the tribes, And 



I should his conduct again offer occasion, 
David counselled the young king not to 
spare him, but at once rid his kingdom of 
so suspicious and malevolent a character. 

David appears to have survived the coro- 
nation of Solomon about six months; for 
although he reigned seven years and six 
months over Judah, and thirty-three years 
over all Israel, yet the whole duration is 
reckoned only forty years in 2 Sam. v. 4, 5 ; 
1 Chron. xxix. 27. The interval he seems 
to have employed in the, development, for 
the benefit of his son, of those plans and 
regulations which had long before been 
formed and considered in his own mind, and 
to which the due effect was afterwards given 
by his son. These are fully stated in the 
five first chapters of the second book of 
Chronicles. 

David was seventy years of age when he 
" slept with his fathers." At that time cer- 
tainly the period of human life was reduced 
to the present standard; for, in recording 
his death at this age, the historian says, 
" He died in a good old age, full of days, 
riches, and honour." He was buried in a 
stately tomb, which, according to a touching 
custom, still prevalent in the East, he had 
prepared for himself, in that part of the city 
(on Mount Zion) which he had covered with 
buildings, and which was called after him, 
" the city of David." 

Our view of the character of David has 
been incorporated with the preceding his- 
tory of his reign. We are, therefore, unwil- 
ling to offer any separate summary of 
that character; and with pleasure avail 
ourselves of the sketch which Jahn has sup- 
plied, — the rather as it will be found fully 
conformable to the view we have taken :— 

" David, as a man, was, in his sentiments 
and conduct, a true Israelite : as a king he 
was a faithful vassal of Jehovah. The 
Psalms, in which he pours forth his whole 
heart, exhibit a sincere and zealous wor- 
shipper of the true God, who places his 
religion, not in offerings, prayers, hymns, 
and other external acts of devot'on, but in 
obedience to the divine precepts, in which 
he seeks and finds all his happiness. God, 



CHAP. II. J 



DAVID. 



283 



and obedience to his will, is with. David 
everywhere the first and predominant idea, 
which consoles him in his flight from Saul, 
and attends him to the throne. 

"All deliverance from danger, and all 
victories, from the first over Goliath to that 
over the Mesopotamian and Syrian kings, 
he expected from the aid of God, and attri- 
buted to the assistance of the Supreme 
Judge of men and nations. As became a 
viceroy of Jehovah, he in all enterprises 
viewed himself as dependent on God, and 
bound to execute the designs of his lord and 
sovereign. He therefore scrupulously fol- 
lowed the directions of the sacred oracle 
and the prophets; he supported the au- 
thority of the priests and Levites, though 
he was so far from being governed by them, 
that he, on the contrary, prescribed to them 
laws and institutions ; he dedicated to the 
sanctuary the spoil, for which he was in- 
debted to the providence of Jehovah, that 
at some future period a palace might be 
erected more suitable to the majesty of 
God; he loved his subjects, caused justice 
to be done to them, called them his brethren, 
and thought himself not degraded by min- 
gling with them in public worship, like any 
other subject of Jehovah. The Hebrews, 
therefore, during the reign of David, clearly 
recognised the theocratical nature of their 
constitution. 

"The imprecations and curses in the 
Psalms of David are to be judged of ac- 
cording to the knowledge and situation of 
the ancient world. They refer either to 
inimical nations or to individual oppressors 
of the people, and so are nothing more than 
prayers for victory and deliverance ; or they 
refer to the personal enemies of David, and 
thus are indications of what transgressors 
are to expect from a just God, and, conse- 
quently, admonitions to the readers or 
singers not to suffer themselves to be borne 
away by a torrent of iniquity and vice. 
Poets express everything strongly, and 
under their pen, advice and admonition 
become a blessing or a curse. Such strong 
expressions, therefore, are so many proofs of 
a zealous love of virtue and an irreconcilable 
hatred of sin. "With a view to warn and 



deter from vice, the Hebrews, according to 
the law of Moses, were accustomed solemnly 
to pronounce curses on the secret trans- 
gressors of the law ; and, considered in this 
light, who can justly find fault with the 
practice? Yea, even God himself, in this 
theocracy, laid curses, that is, threatenings 
of temporal punishment on transgressors. 
After all, these curses in the Psalms of 
David may be in part ascribed to the trans- 
lators ; and the original text, properly un- 
derstood, may contain merely threatenings 
of what would take place as the punishment 
of crime. If David was in reality so vindic- 
tive as his curses seem to intimate, why did 
he not make Saul, his greatest enemy, feel 
the weight of his vengeance when he had 
him in his power? How, in such a situa- 
tion, could a revengeful man restrain himself ^ 
"The adultery with Bathsheba, and the 
murderous transaction with Uriah, are 
shocking crimes, which David himself is so 
far from excusing, that he confesses and 
laments them with the greatest horror. 
But how earnest was his repentance, and 
with what submission to the will of God did 
he bear those calamities which were sent for 
his punishment, and which, as they were 
caused by his own children, must have been 
so much the more distressing to his tender 
parental feelings! Do we not here again 
see the soul entirely and steadily devoted to 
God? 

"The numbering of the people in order, 
as it would seem, to push conquests into 
foreign countries, and the abovementioned 
transaction with Bathsheba, are the only 
two instances in which David seems to have 
forgotten himself and his God. He was in- 
deed no ideal model of human perfection: 
he was not without the blemishes incident 
to human nature ; but on the whole he was 
an example worthy of the imitation of his 
successors, and according as they appear on 
comparison with him, the sacred writers 
estimate their characters." 

The important part which David took in 
the organization of the Hebrew state, and 
even of the church, has already 1 een al- 
luded to, and a cursory view of such of his 



284 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



operations as are known to us may be suit- 
ably introduced in this place. 

The question respecting a standing army 
is not one which, on its abstract political 
grounds, requires here to be noticed. From 
the peculiar nature of the Hebrew consti- 
tution, there are few public questions which 
admit of being considered solely with refer- 
ence to their general policy. In so con- 
sidering them we always find that some 
essential matter as regards the Israelites, 
has been overlooked and omitted. In Pales- 
tine, as generally in the East at this day, 
every citizen was from his childhood trained 
to the use of arms ; and therefore the state 
possessed in its people a body of ready- 
trained militia, so far lessening the need of 
a standing army. And, certainly, if there 
ever was a state in which a standing army 
was unnecessary in itself, and repugnant to 
the first principles of the constitution, that 
was the state of Israel. But kings will 
have standing armies of some kind or other. 
And David was a king far from being un- 
tainted with the vice of military ambition. 
He increased and organized the army 
founded by Saul ; and was disposed to have 
gone far greater and more dangerous lengths 
in his latter days, but for the very serious 
check which his numbering the people, for 
military objects, incurred. 

As organized by David, the army consisted 
of 288,000 men, every 24,000 of whom had a 
separate commander, the whole being under 
the " captain of the host," who, during nearly 
the whole of David's reign, was Joab. The 
divisions of 24,000 performed military duty 
alternately, namely, a month at a time in 
succession, so that all of them went home 
and attended to their own affairs during 
eleven months in the year. We know no- 
thing about their pay ; but, from the analogy 
of similar things, we should judge that only 
the 24,000 in actual service were supported 
and equipped from the royal treasury. It 
is not likely that they had any pay in 
money, but they had a due share of the spoil 
in time of war. 

A division of the army, when in the field, 
is mentioned in this reign*, but it did not 

* 2 Sam. xviii. 



originate with David, as it occurs on various 
previous occasions t. These divisions appear 
to have corresponded to the centre and right 
and left wings of modern armies ; and the 
commanders of them appear to be those to 
whom the name of D*ttf7ltf, shalishim, is 
given, and were persons of high consider- 
ation. 

How great was the authority of the com- 
mander-in-chief appears throughout the 
history of David, whether we look to Abner 
or to Joab; and that this ofiicer continued 
to enjoy great influence in later times, is 
indicated in 2 Kings iv. 13. 

Besides the regular army, David had a 
guard, which was at all times in attendance. 
It seems, as we have already noticed, to 
have been composed of two corps or bands, 
which are mentioned in the history as the 
Cherethites and Pelethites. Some have 
conjectured that they were foreigners from 
the etymology of their names : this is un- 
certain, but for the fact that they formed 
the royal guard, we have the authority of 
Josephus ; and the Chaldee paraphrast 
alleges that they were respectively slingers 
and archers. The body of Gathites, of which 
Ittai was commander, we do not ourselves 
question formed a guard about the person of 
the king. The policy or principle of such a 
guard of foreigners needs no further illus- 
tration than a reference to the Swiss guards 
of the former kings of France. 

The opposition and almost all but the 
genealogical distinction between the Israelites 
and the ancient inhabitants of the land, 
seems to have entirely disappeared in the 
time of David, so that persons of Canaanitish 
origin found employment in the armies of 
the king. Such was Uriah the Hittite, who 
appears even to have held a subordinate 
command, and was obviously a person of 
some consequence. Of still greater import- 
ance was Araunah the Jebusite, whom some 
take to have been a native prince, who 
retained, even in Jerusalem, much conse- 
quence and property, which last was so 
much respected, that David would not 
accept the smallest portion of it as a present, 

t Gen. xiv. 14, 15; Job i. 17; Judges vii. 16, 20; 1 Sara, 
xi. 11. 



CHAP. II.] 



DAVID. 



285 



but insisted on paying for it. There is, j 
however, much reason to conclude that these 
and many other Canaanites had become 
proselytes to the Jewish faith. 

To return to David's military establish- 
ments. A.n ingenious writer is of opinion 
that his band of u worthies" formed a sort of 
order of knighthood. From 2 Sam. xxiii. 8 — 
39, it appears that the heroes or ' mighty 
men,' during the reign of David, were thirty- 
seven in number, including Joab, who was 
commander-in-chief of all his forces. These 
warriors were divided into three classes, the 
first and second of which consisted each of 
three men, Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Sham- 
mah ; Abishai, Benaiah, and Asahel ; and ] 
the third class was composed of the remain- 
' ing thirty, of whom Asahel appears to have 
. been the head. Such is the list, according 
! to 2 Sam. xxiii. ; but in 1 Chron. ix. 10 — 47, 
the list is more numerous, and differs con- 
' siderably from the preceding. The most 
probable solution of tbese variations is, that 
the first list contains the worthies who lived 
in the former part of David's reign, and that 
it underwent various changes in the course 
of his government of the kingdom of Israel. 
At the head of all these 'mighty men' was 
Jashobeam, the son of Hachmoni (1 Chron. 
xi. 11), who, from his office, in 2 Sam. xxiii. 
! 8 (Hebrew and marginal reading), is termed 
1 Josheb-Bassebet, the Tachmonite, head of the 
three? and whose military appellation was 
4 Adino-he-Ezni (the lifting up, or striking 
with the spear)? because he lifted up the 
spear against, or encountered, 300 soldiers 
at once. However extraordinary it may 
seem, we may here perceive a distinct order 
of knighthood, similar to our modern orders, 
and presenting the same honorary degrees, 
and of which Jashobeam, according to modern 
parlance, was the grand master. An insti- 
tution of this kind was, in every respect, 
adapted to the reign, the character, and the 
policy of David."* 

Our acquaintance with the measures taken 
by David in the organization of the civil 
government, is almost confined to the names 
and offices of the several functionaries to 

* Coquerel, ' Biographie Sacree,' torn, ii., p. 167; cited 
by Home, iii. 220. 



whom he confided various departments of 
the public business. Most of these offices 
were probably introduced by him ; and are, 
for the most part, such as were found in the 
ancient and existing governments of the 
East. The information is valuable in so far 
as it makes us acquainted with the fashion 
after which the business of the state was 
distributed: but as the organization com- 
menced by David was more fully elaborated 
by Solomon, it will be better to connect with 
his reign such further notice as it requires. 

During the reign of David the Israelites 
es jerienced few of the evils from the kingly 
government which Samuel had predicted. 
The question, how the regal establishments 
and standing army were to be supported, 
does not appear to have occurred. His con- 
quests in the neighbouring countries brought 
him such immense spoil, as, together with 
the produce of the permanent tributes im- 
posed on the conquered nations, enabled 
him not only to support all his expenses, but 
to lay by vast wealth towards the erection 
of the temple to be built by his successor. 
For this great work, which for many years 
he had so much at heart, and which appears 
to have engaged a large portion of his 
thoughts, his preparations of every kind 
were so extensive, that he appears to us 
fully entitled to the chief share of whatever 
glory the founder of that celebrated fabric 
may fairly claim. For not only did he pro- 
vide a great proportion of all kinds of 
materials, with vast quantities of gold and 
silver, but he purchased and prepared the 
site, and furnished Solomon with the plan of 
the building. His care extended still fur- 
ther ; for he re-organized the whole Levitical 
institution, with a view to a more splendid 
ritual service in the future temple, and to 
the equal distribution of duties among the 
whole Levitical tribe. All his arrangements 
in this matter were religiously adhered to 
by Solomon, in assigning the priests and 
Levites their service in the new temple. 
For this reason it appears more advisable to 
notice these arrangements for the temple 
service, in connection with that account of 
the temple itself which the next chapter I 
will contain. 



286 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



CHAPTER III. 
SOLOMON. 



King Solomon succeeded his father David in 
the year 1030 B.C., when he was about twenty- 
years of age. Never monarch ascended the 
throne with greater advantages, or knew 
better how to secure and improve them. 
Under David, the kingdom had been much 
extended, and brought under good regula- 
tions. The arms of the Hebrews had for so 
many years been feared by all the neigh- 
bouring nations, that the habit of respect 
and obedience on their part, offered to the 
new king the reasonable prospect, confirmed 
by a Divine promise, that his reign should 
be one of peace. JVow, the predominant 
tribe of Judah lay as a lion and as a lioness, 
which no nation ventured to rouse up*. 
The Hebrews were the ruling people, and 
their empire the principal monarchy of 
Western Asia. From the Mediterranean 
Sea and the Phoenicians to the Euphrates, 
in its nearer and remoter bounds, — from the 
river of Egypt and the Elanitic Gulf to 
Berytus, Hamath, and Thapsacus, all were 
subject to the dominion of Solomon ; nor 
were the tribes which wander in northern 
Arabia, eastward to the Persian Gulf, un- 
conscious of his rule. At home, the Canaan- 
ites had not, as we have seen, been either 
entirely expelled or annihilated; but they 
had become obedient and peaceable subjects, 
and, which was of importance to an eastern 
king, liable to services which no king dared 
to impose upon the Israelites themselves. 
Jahn calculates that their whole number 
may have been about 400,000 or 500,000, 
since ultimately 153,000 were able to render 
soccage to the king. The warlike and 
civilized Philistines, the Edomites, Moabites, 
and Ammonites, the Syrians of Damascus, 
and some tribes of the nomadic Arabians of 
the desert, were all tributary to him. The 
revenues derived from the subject states 
were large ; and the wealth in the royal 
treasures great beyond calculation : and the 

* Gen. xlix. 9; Num. xxiii. 24, xxiv. 9. 



king had the enterprise and talent to open 
new sources through which riches -were 
poured into the country from distant lands. 
Nor were the prospects and promises with 
which this reign opened, frustrated in its 
continuance. "Peace gave to all his subjects 
prosperity ; the trade which he introduced 
brought wealth into the country, and pro- 
moted the sciences and arts, which there 
found an active protector in the king, who 
was himself distinguished for his learning. 
The building of the temple and of several 
palaces introduced foreign artists, by whom 
the Hebrews were instructed. Many foreigners, 
and even sovereign princes, were attracted 
to Jerusalem, in order to see and converse 
with the prosperous royal sage. The regular 
progress of all business, the arrangements 
for security from foreign and domestic 
enemies, the army, the cavalry, the armories, 
the chariots, the palaces, the royal house- 
hold, the good order in the administration, 
and in the service of the court, excited as 
much admiration as the wisdom and learning 
of the viceroy of Jehovah. jSo much was 
effected by the single influence of David, be- 
cause he scrupulously conformed himself to 
the theocracy of the Hebrew state." t 

Such is the argument to the history of 
Solomon's reign, to the details of which we 
now proceed. 

Although Solomon was not the first-born, 
nor even the eldest living son of David, but 
succeeded to the throne through the special 
appointment of the Supreme King, Jehovah, 
— there was one circumstance which, from 
the usual notions of the orientals, could not 
but be highly favourable to him, even had 
all his elder brothers been alive. Amnon 
had been born before his father became 
king, and Absalom and Adonijah while he 
was king of Judah only ; while Solomon was 
born when 'his father was king over all 
Israel, and lord over many neighbouring 

+ Jahn, b. iv. sect 33. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



287 



states. And in the East there is a strong- 
prejudice in favour of him who is the son of 
the king and of the kingdom, that is, who is 
horn while his father actually reigns over 
the states which he leaves at his death. 
Thus, therefore, if at the death of David, 
Amnon and Absalom had been alive, as well 
as Adonijah and Solomon, there might have 
been a contest among them on these grounds : 
— Amnon would have claimed as the eldest 
son of David ; Absalom would probably have 
disputed this claim on the ground, first, that 
he was the first-born after David became a 
king ; and, secondly, on the ground that his 
mother was of a royal house: this claim 
could not have been disputed by Adonijah ; 
but he would have considered his own claim 
good as against Amnon, on the one hand, 
and as against Solomon on the other. But 
Solomon might have claimed on the same 
ground as the others against Amnon; and 
against Absalom and Adonijah, on the 
ground that their father was only king of 
Judah when they were born, but king of all 
Israel at the time of his own birth. And 
this claim would, in fact, have been but a 
carrying out of the principle on which 
Absalom and Adonijah are supposed to 
oppose Amnon; and in this claim there 
would have seemed so much reason to an 
oriental, that, apart from all other consider- 
ations, we doubt not it would have found 
many adherents in Israel; and we have no 
doubt that it did operate in producing a 
more cheerful acquiescence in the preference 
given to Solomon. 

Soon after the death of his father, Solomon 
discovered a new plot of Adonijah's, so 
deeply laid and carefully veiled, that he 
even ventured to make the king's own 
mother, Bathsheba, an acting though un- 
conscious party in it. And here it may be 
proper to observe, that in eastern countries, 
where polygamy is allowed, or not forbidden, 
by the law, and where the kings have 
numerous wives and concubines, there is no 
dignity analogous to that which the sole 
wife of a sovereign occupies in Europe. In 
fact, there is no queen, in our sense of the 
word, as applied to the consort of a king. 
But the mother of the king (and next to her, 



or instead of her, the mother of the heir 
apparent) is the woman of the greatest 
influence and highest station in the state, 
and the one whose condition is the most 
queenly of any which the East affords. 
According to this view, Bathsheba — during 
the latter part of David's reign, as mother 
of the heir apparent, and during at least the 
early portion of Solomon's reign, as mother 
of the king, — was, in fact, the queen of 
Israel ; whence in both periods we find her 
taking a part in public affairs, which, how- 
ever slight, is such as none but a woman so 
placed could have taken. 

The first manifestation of Adonijah's de- 
sign was to endeavour to procure permission 
to espouse Abishag, one of the wives of his 
father, whom he had taken in his last days 
and had left a virgin. He had the address 
to interest Bathsheba in his object, and to 
get her to propose the subject to the king, 
although part of what he said to her as an 
inducement was well calculated to awaken 
her suspicions : " Thou knowest," said he, 
" that the kingdom was mine, and that all 
Israel set their faces on me, that I should 
reign : howbeit the kingdom is turned about, 
and is become my brother's : for it is from 
the Lord." . 

The king was seated on his throne when 
Bathsheba appeared before him to urge the 
suit of Adonijah. He rose when he beheld 
her, and bowed to her ; after which he 
caused a seat to be brought and placed at 
his right hand for her. She then made the 
"one small petition" with which she was 
charged. The king instantly saw through 
the whole ; and knew enough of the several 
parties to feel assured (or actually knew) 
that the measure had been prompted hy 
Joab and Abiathar, or that at least they 
were parties to the ulterior design. Accord- 
ing to what we have already stated respecting 
the widows of a deceased king, it is obvious 
that Solomon recognised in this insidious 
demand a plan formed to accredit the former 
pretensions of Adonijah. He, therefore, 
answered warmly, "And why dost thou ask 
Abishag, the Shunammite, for Adonijah 1 
Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is 
mine elder brother ; even for him, and for 



288 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV 



Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of 
Zeruiah." By this he clearly intimated that 
he considered Joab and Abiathar as parties 
in this new plot, and, as such, liable to the 
punishments which he proceeded to inflict. 
Adonijah he ordered to be put to death, as 
one whom it was no longer safe to pardon. 
On receiving this news, Joab justified the 
suspicions (if not more) of the king, by 
fleeing for refuge to the sanctuary of the 
altar — a plain act of a guilty conscience. 
When this was told to Solomon, he ordered 
Benaiah to go and put him to death. Benaiah 
went, and ordered him, in the king's name, 
to come forth. This he refused, saying, 
"Nay, but I will die here!" either in the 
hope that Solomon would so far regard the 
altar, as not to slay him, or that he would 
die there in the hope that God, whose altar 
it was, would be gracious to him. This 
being a new case, in which Benaiah liked 
not to act on his own responsibility, he 
returned to report the matter to the king, 
who, with great firmness, and with a freedom 
from superstition which shows how well he 
understood the letter and spirit of the law, 
said, "Do as he hath said, and fall upon 
him, and bury him ; that thou mayest take 
away the innocent blood, which Joab shed, 
from me, and from the house of my father." 
So Joab was slain at the altar, and buried in 
the garden of his own house in the wilder- 
ness. Benaiah, who had been his executioner, 
was made commander-in-chief in his room. 
It appears that in the Hebrew kingdom, as in 
some other ancient, and some modern states, 
it was the duty of the king's chief officer to 
execute his sentence upon high offenders. 

As to Abiathar, who had before joined 
Adonijah, and was no stranger to the more 
recent intrigue, he had shared the fate of 
Joab, if the king had not been mindful of 
his early and long-continued attachment to 
David, and respected the sacred character 
he bore. He was commanded to withdraw 
to his estate in Anathoth, and no longer pre- 
sume to exercise his sacerdotal functions. 
Thus was the house of Eli finally degraded in 
the person of Abiathar, and the house of 
Eleazar completely restored in the person of 
Zadok. 



This affair reminded Solomon of the neces- 
sity of keeping watch over another disaffected 
person, Shimei, as counselled by David. He 
therefore ordered him to fix his residence in 
J erusalem, which he engaged him by oath 
not to leave, forewarning him that the breach 
of this engagement would be at the expense 
of his life. Of this, Shimei was properly 
mindful for two years ; but then he was in- 
duced to leave the city, and went as far as 
Gath (a suspicious quarter) in pursuit of two 
runaway slaves. He was, therefore, on hie 
return, consigned to the sword of Benaiah. 

By the removal of these dangerous per- 
sons, Solomon felt his throne secured to 




him. He then sought an alliance worthy of 
the rank to which his kingdom had attained. 
The nearest power, from an alliance with 
which even he might derive honour, was 
that of Egypt. He therefore demanded and 
received the daughter of the reigning Pha- 
raoh in marriage. Of this princess the an- 
nexed figure * is supposed by Rosellini to be 
a portrait, as it more certainly is of a 
daughter of a king who reigned about the 
time of Solomon. His new spouse was re- 
ceived by the king of Israel with great 
magnificence, and was lodged in " the city 
of David," until the new and splendid palace, 
which he had already commenced, should be 

* This is, in fact, a portrait of the daughter of Shishak, 
the Egyptian king, who invaded Judasa early in the reign 
of Solomon's son, Rehoboam ; from which circumstance, 
as well as from the distance of time, he is not probably the 
same king whose daughter Solomon married. 



CHAP. HI.] 



SOLOMON. 



289 



completed. That Solomon should thus con- 
tract an alliance, on equal terms, with the 
reigning family of that great nation which 
! had formerly held the Israelites in bondage, 
was, in the ordinary point of view, a great 
thing for him, and shows the relative im- 
j portance into which the Hebrew kingdom 
1 had now risen. The king is in no part of 
■ Scripture blamed for this alliance, even in 
^ places where it seems unlikely that blame 
, would have been spared had he been con- 
! sidered blameworthy ; and as we know that 
the Egyptians were idolaters, this absence of 
blame may intimate that Solomon stipulated 
that the Egyptian princess should abandon 
the worship of her own gods, and conform to 
the Jewish law. This at least was what 
would be required by the law of Moses, which 
the king was not likely (at least, at this 
time of his life) to neglect. Xor need we 
suppose that the royal family of Egypt 
would make much difficulty in this ; for, 
except among the Israelites, the religion of a 
woman has never in the East been considered 
of much consequence. 

Solomon, soon after, sought by his exam- 
ple to restore the proper order of public 
worship. At Gibeon was the tabernacle 
and altar of Moses, and there, notwith- 
standing the absence of the ark, the symbol 
of the Divine presence, the Shechinah, still 
abode. This therefore was, according to the 
law, the only proper seat of public worship, 
and the place to which the tribes should re- 
sort to render homage to the Great King. 
Therefore, at one of the religious festivals, 
the king repaired to Gibeon, accompanied by 
all his court, the officers of his army, and 
the chiefs and elders of his people, with a 
vast multitude of the people. There, in the 
midst of all the state and cei'emony of the 
holy solemnities, the king presented, to be 
offered on the brazen altar, a thousand 
beasts, as a holocaust. This solemn act of 
homage from the young king was acceptable 
to God, who, in the following night mani- 
fested himself to him in a dream, and pro- 
mised to satisfy whatever wish he might 
then form. Instead of expressing the usual 
desires which animate kings, as well as 
others, for wealth, and glory, and length of 



days, — Solomon expressed his sense of the 
difficulties, to one so young, of the high sta- 
tion to which he had been called ; and, 
humbly conscious of his lack of the expe- 
rience required to conduct well the affairs 
of his large empire and numerous people, he 
prayed for wisdom — nothing but wisdom : — 
" I am but a little child : I know not how to 
go out or come in*. And thy servant is in 
the midst of thy people which thou hast 
chosen, a great people, that cannot be num- 
bered nor counted for multitude. Give, 
therefore, thy servant an understanding 
heart to judge thy people, that I may discern 
between good and bad : for who is able to 
judge this thy so great a people 1 " This re- 
quest which Solomon had made was highly 
pleasing to God. That which he had asked 
was promised to him, in abounding measure 
— wisdom, such as none before him had ever 
possessed, or should possess in future times : 
and since he had made so excellent a choice, 
that which he had not asked should also be 
given to him — riches and honours beyond all 
the kings of his time, and, besides this, 
length of days, if he continued in obedience. 
Solomon awoke : and feeling within himself 
that illumination of mind and spirit which 
assured him that his dream had indeed been 
oracular and divine, he returned with great 
joy to Jerusalem. 

Soon after this, the discharge of those 
judicial duties which engage so much of the 
attention of eastern kings, gave him an op- 
portunity of displaying so much discernment 
as satisfied the people of his uncommon' 
endowments, and his eminent qualifications 
for his high place. This was his celebrated 
judgment between the two harlots who both 
claimed a living child, and both disclaimed 
one that had died ; in which he discovered 
the rightful owner of the living child by 
calling forth that self-denying tenderness 
which always reigns in a mother's heart f. 
This produced the very best effect among all 
the people ; for generally nothing is better 
understood and appreciated, popularly, than 
an acute and able judicial decision of some 
difficult point in a case easily understood, 

* That is, " I know not how to conduct affairs." 
t See the original narrative in 1 Kings iii. 16—28. 



290 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



and by which the sympathies are much 
engaged. 

The preparations for the temple had from 
the first engaged the attention of Solomon. 
Among the first who sent to congratulate 
him on his succession was Hiram, king of 
Tyre, who has already been named as an 
attached friend and ally of David. The 
value of the friendship offered by this 
monarch was fully appreciated by Solomon, 
who returned the embassy with a letter, in 
which he opened the noble design he enter- 
tained, and solicited the same sort of assist- 
ance in the furtherance of it, as the same 
king had rendered to his father David, when 
building his palace. Hiram assented with 
great willingness, and performed the re- 
quired services with such fidelity and zeal, 
as laid the foundation of a lasting friendship 
between the kings, and to the formation of 
other mutually beneficial connections be- 
tween them. The forests of the Lebanon 
mountains only could supply the timber 
required for this great work. Such of these 
forests as lay nearest the sea were in the 




[Felling trees in Lebanon *.] 



* This little cut from the Egyptian antiquities, from a 
large piece of sculpture representing an invasion of Leba- 
non by an Egyptian king, represents the mode in which 
trees were felled in Lebanon. 



possession of the Phoenicians ; among whom 
timber was in such constant demand, that 
they had acquired great and acknowledged 
skill in the felling and transportation 
thereof, and hence it was of much impor- 
tance that Hiram consented to employ large 
bodies of men in Lebanon to hew timber, as 
well as others to perform the service of 
bringing it down to the sea-side, whence it 
was to be taken along the coast in floats to 
the port of Joppa, from which place it could 
be easily taken across the country to Jeru- 
salem. This portion of the assistance ren- 
dered by Hiram was of the utmost value and 
importance. If he had declined Solomon's 
proposals, all else that he wanted might 
have been obtained from Egypt. But that 
country was so far from being able to supply 
timber, that it wanted it more than almost 
any nation. 

Solomon also desired that Phoenician arti- 
ficers of all descriptions should be sent to 
Jerusalem, particularly such as excelled in 
the arts of design, and in the working of 
gold, silver, and other metals, as well as pre- 
cious stones; nor was he insensible of the 
value and beauty of those scarlet, purple, 
and other fine dyes, in the preparation and 
application of which the Tyrians excelled. 
Men skilled in all these branches of art 
were largely supplied by Hiram. He sent 
also a person of his own name, a Tyrian by 
birth, who seems to have been a second 
Bezaleel ; for his abilities were so great, and 
his attainments so extensive and various, 
that he was skilled not only in the working 
of metals, but in all kinds of works in wood 
and stone, and even in embroidery, in 
tapestry, in dyes, and the manufacture of all 
sorts of fine cloth. And not only this, but 
his general attainments in art, and his 
inventive powers, enabled him to devise the 
means of executing, and to execute, what- 
ever work in art might be proposed to him. 
This man was a treasure to Solomon, who 
made him overseer not only of the men 
whom the king of Tyre now sent, but of his 
own workmen, and those whom David had 
formerly engaged and retained in his em- 
ployment. 

In return for all these advantages, Solo- 



CHAP, in.] 



SOLOMON. 



291 



mon engaged on his part to furnish the king 
of Tyre yearly with 2500 quarters * of wheat, 
and 150,000 gallons t of pure olive oil, for 
his own use; besides furnishing the men 
employed in Lebanon with the same corn 
quantities, respectively, of wheat and barley, 
and the same liquid quantities of wine and 
oil J. 

Josephus informs us that the correspon- 
dence on this subject between Solomon and 
Hiram, copies of which are given by him as 
well as in the books of Kings and Chronicles, 
were in his time still preserved in the 
archives of Tyre§. 

Solomon, who certainly had a strong lean- 
ing towards arbitrary power, being still in 
want of labourers, ventured to raise a levy of 
30,000 Israelites, whom he sent to assist the 
Phoenician timber-cutters in Lebanon, — not 
all at once, but in alternate bands of 10,000 
each, so that each band returned home and 
rested two months out of three. This 
relief, and the sacred object of the service, 
probably prevented the opposition which the 
king might otherwise have experienced. For 
the more onerous labour in the quarries, 
Solomon called out the remnant of the Ca- 
naanites, probably with those foreigners (or 
their sons) who had been brought into the 
country as prisoners or slaves during the 
wars of David, who had, indeed, left an enu- 
meration of all of them (adult males) for 
this very purpose. Their number was 
153,600 : according to the common custom 
of the East in such cases, these no doubt 



* In the original, 20,000 corim; and as the core appears 
to have been about equal to one of our bushels, this gives 
the result in the text. 

t Twenty thousand baths, of seven and a half gallons 
each. 

% This explanation of the separate quantities to Hiram 
'* for his household," and for the workmen in Lebanon, 
obviates the apparent discrepancy between the statements 
in 1 Kings v. 11, and 2 Chron. ii. 10. 

5 Antiq. viii. 2, 8. 



which has just been given, and as such ser- 
vice is usually required from persons in their 
condition, when any great public work is in 
progress, this measure was doubtless con- 
sidered less arbitrary, and gave occasion to 
less discontent, than we, with our notions, 
might be disposed to imagine. Of these 
strangers, 70,000 were appointed to act as 
porters to the others, and to the Phoenician 
artisans. They also probably had the heavy 
duty of transporting to Jerusalem the large 
stones, which 60,000 more of them were em- 
ployed in hewing and squaring in the quar- 
ries. Of these the stones intended for the 
foundation were in immense blocks ; and, as 
well as the rest, were probably brought from 
no great distance, as quarries of very suit- 
able stone are abundant in the neighbour- 
hood. The stones were squared in the 
quarry, to facilitate their removal. It has 
been a question how such vast blocks of stone 
as we see in some ancient buildings were 
brought to their destination. Satisfaction 
on this point is afforded by the annexed en- 
graving, which shows how this was managed 
by the Egyptians, and, doubtless, by the 
Israelites and others. The string of cattle 
was prolonged as the weight to be drawn on 
the sledge required. The remaining 3300 of 
these strangers were employed as overseers 
of the rest, and were, in their turn, account- 
able to superior Israelite officers. 

Not only were the stones squared and 
fitted in the quarry, but the timber was 
shaped for its use, and every other article 
fitted and finished before it was brought to 
J erusalem ; so that, at last, when the edifice 
began to be reared with the materials thus 
carefully prepared, — 

" No workman's steel, no pond'rous axes rung; 
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric 
sprung." — Hebeb. 




[Egyptian mode of Transporting Large Stones.] 



U 2 



292 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IT. 



Three years were spent in these prepara- 
tions ; but, at last, all was ready, and the 
foundation of this famous temple was laid in 
the fourth year of Solomon's reign (1027 
b.c), in the second month, and finished in 
the eleventh year and eighth month, being a 
space of seven years and six months. 

The very great difference between the 
various plans and views of this temple which 
different authorities have offered, quite suf- 
ficiently intimates the difficulty which has 
been experienced in connecting together the 
several descriptive details which the Scrip- 
tures afford, in such a manner as to obtain a 
complete idea of the whole fabric. Warned 
by the manifest failure of his predecessors, 
the author of the present work was led to 
entertain the notion, and to declare it in the 
' Pictorial Bible,' that the contemporary 
architecture of their renowned neighbours, 
the Egyptians — which we know to have had 
an extensive influence in much remoter lands 
— could hardly fail to have operated upon 
the style and plan of their first and only 
temple. We therefore suggested, that in an 
Egyptian temple we were likely to discover 
a much nearer approximation to the temple 
at Jerusalem than is now obtainable from 
any other source. We have since had the 
very great satisfaction of finding that an 
architect, Mr. Bardwell, was about the same 
time led to very similar conclusions. It had 
been a matter of much regret to us that no 
regularly-educated architect had turned his 
attention to the subject ; as it must be evi- 
dent that such a person was more likely than 
any unprofessional student to combine the 
architectural details of the Scriptural ac- 
count, so as to form the collective image 
which they were intended to exhibit. We 
shall gratify and instruct our readers by 
transcribing the whole of this, the only pro- 
fessional estimate-of Solomon's Temple which, 
we believe, has ever been given. We make 
no alterations, but have added a few explana- 
tory notes where we think Mr. Bardwell has 
been in error : — 

" With so much information before us at 
tne present day, it is almost needless for me 
to assert that the Temple of Solomon was in 
the Egyptian style of architecture : a mo- 



ment's reflection will convince every un- 
biassed mind that such must have been the 
case ; since, although Greece had been colo- 
nised from Egypt nearly 200 years before 
this, it is not at all likely, from the slow de- 
velopment of human improvement, that the 
style we call Greek had then superseded its 
Egyptian parent ; and what is conclusive 
upon this point, as we shall soon see, is, the 
Temple of Solomon had not, in its propor- 
tions and details, anything in common with 
the temples of Greece. That the Jews had 
no peculiar style of their own, excepting so 
far as they were restricted from the use of 
figures of animals in decoration, is also pro- 
bable, as, ever since they had settled in 
Canaan, 400 years previous, they had been 
constantly engaged in the wars necessary to 
extend and conserve their newly-acquired 
territory, and, consequently, had no oppor- 
tunity of cultivating the fine arts. Besides, 
Solomon was in constant intercourse with the 
Pharaoh of his age, and married his daughter 
(see her portrait in Rosellini, recently dis- 
covered). Further, in no part of the world had 
temple architecture and the art of cutting and 
polishing stones ever arrived, before or since, 
to such perfection as in Egypt. The build- 
ing of the Temple of Solomon, also, was not 
entered upon hastily; on the contrary, the 
architect, from the Egyptian colony of Tyre, 
had sent in his plans to King David years 
before the building was commenced [?] ; these 
plans that much-honoured man carefully de- 
livered to Solomon, with a schedule of the , 
materials which he had collected for this his * 
ardently-desired work. The architect, there- I 
fore, having had plenty of time to perfect 
his plan, naturally made his design from the 
best existing examples, the temples of his 
' father land.' The Tyrians, being at that 
time the great common carriers of the world, 
kept up an extensive commerce with Egypt, 
I therefore infer from this and the before- 
mentioned reasons, that the masons were 
Egyptian, and the stone polished granite*, 
all prepared, fitted, and finished before it was 

* It could not be granite, which is not obtainable nearer 
than the Sinai mountains. It was probably limestone ; at 
least we know not of any other that can be deemed suf- 
ficiently accessible for this use. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



293 



brought to Jerusalem, since, moreover, there 
is nothing mentioned about the expensive- 
ness of any article but the stone, ' costly 
stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits 
and stones of eight cubits.'* 

" The cella of the temple of Solomon, as 
described in the first book of Kings, was 
small, as all those of the Egyptian temples 
were, of few parts, but those noble and har- 
monious. It was about the same length, but 
not so wide, as St. Paul's, Covent Garden: this 
church is a double square inside, the temple 
was a treble square ; but one square was di- 
vided off for the oracle, and geometrical pro- 
portions thus established. It was one hun- 
dred and sixteen feet three inches long, to 
which must be added the pronaos, in the 
same way as that of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
nineteen feet four inches and a half more ; 
giving a total length of one hundred and 
thirty-five feet seven inches and a half long, 
by thirty-seven feet six inches broad, and 
fifty-eight feet one inch and a half high. It 
was surrounded on three sides by chambers 
in three stories, each story wider than the 
one below it, as the walls were narrowed, or 
made thinner, as they ascended, by sets-off 
of eleven inches on each side, which received 
the flooring-joists, ' as no cutting was on any 
account permitted.' Access to these apart- 
ments was given from the right-hand side of 
the interior of the temple, by a winding 
staircase of stone, such as may be seen in 
several of the ancient Nubian temples. A 
row of loop-hole windows above the chambers 
gave light to the cella. The oracle was an 
exact square, of thirty-seven feet six inches, 
divided from the rest of the temple by a 
partition of cedar, thirty-seven feet six 
inches high, in the centre of which was a 
pair of folding- doors of olive-wood, seven 
feet six inches wide, very richly carved, with 
palm-trees and open flowers and cherubim ; 
the floor of the temple was boarded with fir, 
the roof was flat, covered with gold, upon 
thick planks of cedar, supported by large 
cedar beams. The inside walls and the ceil- 
ing were lined with cedar, beautifully carved, 
representing cherubim and palm-trees, clus- 

* " The temple cubit was twenty-three and ahalf inches, 
according to Sir Isaac Newton." 



ters of foliage and open flowers, among 
which the lotus was conspicuous; and the 
whole interior was overlaid with gold, so 
that neither wood nor stone was seen, and 
nothing met the eye but pure gold, either 
plain as on the floor, or richly chased, and 
enriched with the gems they had brought 
from Egypt at the exodus, upon the walls and 
ceiling. At a little distance from 'the most 
holy place,' like the railing of a communion- 
table, were fixed five massive gold cande- 
labra, on each side the entrance, and between 
the candelabra were chains or wreaths of 
flowers, wrought in pure gold, separating 
even the entrance of the oracle from the 
body of the temple. Within the oracle was 
set the ancient 1 ark of the covenant,' which 
had preceded them to the Promised Land, 
beneath two colossal cherubim, each nineteen 
feet four inches and a half high, with im- 
mense outspread wings, one wing of each 
cherubim touching the other in the middle 
of the temple, while the other wings touched 
the wall on each side ; before them was the 
altar of incense, formed of cedar, and en- 
tirely overlaid with refined gold ; and on the 
sides of the temple were arranged ten golden 
tables, five on each side, for the exhibition 
of the shew-bread, besides other tables of 
silver, for the display of above one hundred 
gold vases of various patterns, and the 
censers, spoons, snuffers, &c, used in the 
service of the temple. It appears that the 
inside of the pronaos was also covered with 
gold ; from it a grand pair of folding-doors 
nine feet four inches and a half wide opened 
into the temple. These doors were also over- 
laid with gold, embossed in rich patterns of 
cherubim, and knops and open flowers ; both 
pairs of doors had ornamented hinges of 
gold, and before the doors of the oracle hung 
a veil embroidered with cherubim, in blue and 
purple and crimson. 

" Hiram, the architect (who was also a 
king) f, had sent over from Tyre his clerk of 
the works, who superintended the building- 
till it became necessary to set up the two 

f The reader will perceive, throughout this extract, much 
masonic phraseology, and some historical facts for which 
there is no authority beyond the masonic archives, and 
that authority men of letters have not yet learned to 
respect. 



294 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IT. 



great columns of the pronaos ;• these were of 
the usual proportions of Egyptian columns, 
being five and a half diameters high, and as 
these gave the great characteristic feature to 
the building, Solomon sent an embassy to 
fetch the architect from Tyre to superintend 
the moulding and casting of these columns, 
which were intended to be of brass ; and ob- 
serve how conspicuous is the idea of the vase 
(the boui of our translation) rising from a 
cylinder ornamented with lotus flowers ; the 
bottom of the vase was partly hidden by the 
flowers, the belly of it was overlaid with net- 
work, ornamented by seven wreaths, the He- 
brew number of happiness, and beneath the 
lip of the vase were two rows of pome- 
granateS) one hundred in each row ; these 
superb pillars were eight feet diameter, and 
forty-four feet high, supporting a noble en- 
tablature fourteen feet high. 

" The temple was surrounded on the north, 
south, and east, by the inner or priest's 
court, which had a triple colonnade around 
it; and before the western front was the 
great court, square and very spacious, having 
in the midst the great brazen altar, as wide 
as the front of the temple itself, viz., thirty- 
seven feet six inches square; it contained 
also the magnificent basin, called the ' molten 
sea,' besides ten other lavatories, all of 
splendid workmanship in brass, for our ar- 
chitect appears to have a first-rate artist, 
both in designing and executing, and his 
materials and talents to have been inade- 
quately rewarded even by the donation of 
twenty cities. The great court had three 
propylea, with gates of brass, and was sur- 
rounded also with a triple colonnade. So- 
lomon placed his palace, in imitation of the 
Egyptian kings, adjoining the temple; and 
like them, also assumed the sacerdotal office, 
presiding at the consecration of the temple, 
preaching to the people, and offering the 
dedicatory prayer. Magnificent must have 
been the sight, to see the young king, clothed 
in royalty, officiating as priest before the 
immense altar*, while the thousands of Le- 

* This is very, very wrong. By the part he took, So- 
lomon assumed no priestly functions. Surely Mr. Bard- 
well must know how zealously the priesthood was guarded 
from the interference of even kingly pretensions. Signal 
and immediate visitations— death, paralysis, or leprosy, 



vites and priests, on the east side, habited in 
surplices, with harps, cymbals, and trumpets 
in their hands, led the eye to the beautiful 
pillars flanking the doors of the temple, now . 
thrown o-nen and displaying the interior 
brilliantly lighted up, while the burnished 
gold of the floor, the ceiling, and the walls, 
with the precious gems with which they were 
enriched, reflecting the light on all sides, 
would completely overwhelm the imagina- 
tion, were it not excited by the view of the 
embroidered veil, to consider the yet more 
awful glories of the most holy place; and 
astounding must have been the din of the 
instruments of the four thousand Levites, 
led on by the priests with one hundred and 
twenty trumpets, directing the choruses of 
the immense congregation, as they chanted 
the sublime compositions of the royal Psal- 
mist in the grand intonations of the Hebrew 
language^ like the ' roaring of many 
waters.' "f 

We shall let this stand for a general de- 
scription of the temple of Solomon, and 
shall only add a few observations on some 
points to which we are willing to give more 
particular notice than Mr. Bardwell has be- 
stowed. 

The Egyptian temple, which this writer 
regards as the most probable model of that 
of Solomon, is the one at Dandour, engraved 
in Gau's 'Nubia,' and the frontispiece of 
which is also given in Maddox's ' Excur- 
sions.' 

One of the most valuable points in the 
description, is that in which, from the ex- 
ample offered in these instances, it is deter- 
mined that the two famous pillars of brass, 
to which the names of Jachin and Boaz were 
given, did not stand detached and apart, as 
most writers have concluded, but were de- 
signed for the useful purpose of support- 
ing the entablature of the pronaos. We 
subscribe entirely to this ; although the 
other alternative, were it correct, might be 
equally illustrated by a reference to Egyp- 
tian temples, as is shown by various instances 1 

failed not to follow such assumption of the priestly func- 
tions as is here ascribed to Solomon. 

t ' Temples, Aiicient and Modern." By W. Bardwell, 
Architect. 1837. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



295 




("Obelisks in front of a Temple.] 



in which, as in the annexed cut, obelisks are 
placed immediately in front of temples, at 
each side of, and at equal distances from the 
door of entrance. 

The door of the temple is particularly 
mentioned in all its parts — its valves, its 
sideposts, and its golden " hinges." Our own 
and other translations of the Bible are un- 
questionably wrong when they speak of the 
" hinges " of doors. Doors were not in 
former times, nor are they now, hung by 
hinges in the east; they turned on pins, 
which among the Egyptians were frequently 
of metal (bronze) ; several of them have 
been found and are preserved in various 
cabinets, and in the British Museum. Such 
doubtless were the golden " hinges " to the 
door of Solomon's temple. Sometimes, how- 
ever, the pin was formed out of projecting 
ends of the wood which formed the substance 
of the door. And this is very usual now in the 
East, where the use of harder woods than the 
Egyptians possessed renders the metal pins 
less necessary. The pins turned in holes in 
the lintel and threshold (or in the floor be- 
hind the threshold) ; and it is now common 
in the ruins of Palestine and Syria to see 
these holes in stone lintels and thresholds, in 
which turned the pins of doors long since 
destroyed. 

It is said that to the temple there were 
"windows of narrow lights." Or, as the i 



margin of our Bibles renders, it "windows 
broad within and narrow without, or skewed 
and closed." The passage is difficult* ; and 
Boothroyd follows Michaelis and Dathe in 
translating, " windows that might be closed." 
The annexed specimens of ancient Egyptian 
windows illustrate all the suggested alter- 
natives. The form of the temple window is 
doubtless among them ; and the others may 




LWindows.] 

illustrate the different windows mentioned 
in the Scripture. One of Solomon's subse- 
quent buildings — his country palace, called 
" the house of the forest of Lebanon " (pro- 
bably on account of the plantations with 
which it was surrounded) — had three rows of 
square windows, in which light was opposite 
to light, on the different sides of the build- 
ing f. 

As the utensils for the sacred service were 
similar in design and use to those in the 
tabernacle of Moses, which have received 
due attention, it is not necessary to enter 
into details respecting those which Solomon 
provided for his temple. It may suffice to 
mention that, seeing it was designed that 
the sacred services should be conducted on a 
larger and more splendid scale than in 
former times, the instruments of service were 
proportionately larger, or more splendid, or 
more numerous. The most remarkable of 
the new utensils was " the molten sea," 
which was destined to occupy the place of 
" the brazen laver " of the old tabernacle. 
It was cast of fine brass, a hand's breadth 

* ^ftZON D^Bpltf Literally, apertas clausas,- 
" open shut." 
f 1 Kings vii. 4, 5. 



296 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



thick, and its border was wrought " like the 
brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies." It 
was so large as to contain about 15,000 
gallons of water. It was mounted on twelve 
brazen oxen, which must have given it a 
very imposing appearance. The instance 
proves, by the by, as do the figures of 
cherubim so profusely displayed in all parts 
of the temple, and the brazen serpent in the 
wilderness, that the Hebrews were not for- 
bidden to make images of living creatures, 
so that they were not designed for any ido- 
latrous or superstitious object. Had it been 
otherwise, nothing could well have been 
more suspicious and dangerous than the 
figures of oxen, considering the addiction of 
the Israelites to the worship of the ox Apis, 
as evinced by the golden figure of him which 
they worshipped in the wilderness, and by 
those which were ultimately set up in Dan 
and Bethel. Lions, as well as oxen and 
cherubim, were figured on the base of the 
smaller la vers which stood in the same (the 
inner) court of the temple with the large 
one. 

As the priests and Levites were immedi- 
ately, on the completion of the temple, sub- 
jected to the regulations of David, which 
ever after continued in force, — this is the 
proper place to take some notice of these 
rules. Some alterations in previous arrange- 
ments would have been very proper even 
without reference to the temple; for the 
numbers of the Levites had so increased, and 
their labours in the Land of Promise had 
become so light, that it could not be easy for 
all of them to find occupation in their pro- 
per duties. 

As a preliminary measure, David had 
caused the tribe of Levi to be numbered, and 
it was found to contain 38,000 males above 
thirty years of age. It seems that he de- 
signed their services to commence at that 
age when he ordered the census to be taken ; 
but afterwards saw occasion to ordain that 
at least their easier services should com- 
mence at twenty. Of the 38 ; 000, David di- 
rected that 24,000 should be assigned as 
assistants to the priests in the service of the 
temple — not, of course, all at once, but in 
alternate weekly courses of 1000 each. Of 



these some of the highest rank had charge 
of the sacred treasures. Others, apparently 
of lower rank, attended the priests in all 
their services at the altar, especially in pre- 
paring the victims designed for offerings ; 
and some had special charge of preparing 
the shew-bread and unleavened cakes, with 
the proper quantity of flour, for the morning 
and evening service. " From the text (1 
Chron. xxiii. 29), it is inferred that these had 
in their custody, within the sanctuary, the 
original standard for weights and measures, 
liquid and dry. Hence we often read in 
Scripture of the shekel of the sanctuary. — 
not that there were two sorts of shekels, one 
sacred and another civil, as some have sup- 
posed, but because weights and measures, 
being reckoned among the sacred things, 
were kept in the sanctuary, as they were in 
the temples of the pagans, and afterwards 
in Christian churches." * 

Of the remaining 14,000, there were 4000 
divided into twenty-four courses like the 
others, appointed to act as porters and guards 
of the temple. It seems that on this class 
devolved also the duty of seeing the build- 
ings kept neat and clean. 

The same number (4000), similarly divided, 
were to act as musicians in the temple. This 
was quite a new part of the service ; for pre- 
viously there had been nothing of music in 
the Hebrew service, save the occasional blow- 
ing of trumpets. We may well believe that 
this was a matter in which so eminent a 
musician and poet as David himself took 
much interest. In fact he had, on a smaller 
scale, already introduced a musical service 
at the tabernacle. He not only caused the 
musical instruments for this service to be 
made under his own cognisance, but collected 
and composed the psalms of thanksgiving 
and of prayer which were to be employed in 
this part of the temple worship. Part of 
this service was vocal. With respect to the 
musical instruments, all the various instru- 
ments which were in use among the Hebrews 
are, on different occasions, named in connec- 
tion with the services of the temple. 

As our attention is limited to the regula- 
tions made by David and enforced by So- 

* Home, iii. 273. 



CHAP. HE] 



SOLOMON. 



297 



lomon, we abstain from any larger notice of 
the music and psalmody of the Levitical 
service. In this as in all the other divisions 
of service, there were some who were chiefs 
or overseers. The persons of the musical 
order who, from their superior abilities, had 
the superintendence of all the others, were 
Heman and Asaph, of the line of Gershon, 
and Jeduthun of the line of Merari. Their 
names often occur in the titles of the Psalms, 
which were sent to them as composed by 
David, for the musical service. 

The remaining 6000 Levites were distri- 
buted throughout the country as judges and 
genealogists. They also appear to have in- 
structed the people in the Law of Moses, by 
expounding the several parts of it, in the 
places where* they resided ; and that they 
kept the public records and genealogies of 
the respective tribes, is generally understood 
by the Jews. 

Doubtless, in apportioning to the Levites 
their lines of duty, regard was had to their 
various abilities and attainments. It will be 
observed that the distribution of this great 
body into bands, which performed duty in 
rotation, left by far the greater part of their 
time free from their proper Levitical duties. 
We find numerous instances in Scripture 
that this leisure was much employed in the 
service of the state. It was indeed obvious 
and natural, that men of such superior edu- 
cation and attainments, and whose residences 
were dispersed over the country, should take 
an influential position in their respective 
localities, and that they should be much 
employed as the agents and officers of the 
general government in their own districts. 

The priests having increased in full pro- 
portion to the Levites, were, in like manner, 
divided into twenty-four classes, each of 
which officiated a week alternately. Sixteen 
of these classes were of the family of Eleazar, 
and eight of the family of Ithamar. They 
succeeded one another on the Sabbath-day, 
! until they had all attended in their turn. 
Each class had its own chief or president, 
whom some writers suppose to be the same 
as <c the chief-priests " so often mentioned in 
the New Testament, and in the writings of 
Josephus. For although only four of the 



classes returned from the Babylonish capti- 
vity, these were subdivided into the original 
number of twenty-four, to which the original 
names were given. The chief person of each 
class appointed an entire family to offer the 
sacrifices, and at the close of their week they 
all joined together in sacrificing. As each 
family latterly contained a great number of 
priests, they drew lots for the different offices 
which they were to perform*. 

The part taken by David and other kings 
in ordering " the house of God," and even of 
appointing and deposing the high-priest, 
might seem very extraordinary at the first 
view. But it will be recollected that, accord- 
ing to the theory of the constitution, the 
kings were the specially appointed vice- 
gerents of Jehovah, which necessarily gave 
them a general power of control superior to 
any other. It is seen, however, that the re- 
gulations which were made rescinded no law 
of Moses, nor interfered with any positive 
enactment. But the king, from his position 
as vicegerent of Jehovah, was superior, even 
in his relation to God, to the high-priest, who 
was only Jehovah's minister: and while the 
law made no express provision on the sub- 
ject, it was certainly a matter of policy that 
the appointment of so important and influ- 
ential an officer in the state should be re- 
tained by the crown. It was obvious, never- 
theless, that no high-priest could be legally 
appointed, but from the family to which that 
dignity had been originally assigned. 

The temple, with all things destined for 
its service, and every arrangement connected 
with it, being completed in seven years, its 
dedication was celebrated the year after, 
with a magnificence worthy of the object and 
the occasion. All the chief men in Israel were 
present — the heads of tribes, and paternal 
chiefs, together with multitudes of people 
from all parts of the land. The priests, if 
not the Levites, also attended in full force, 
the succession of the courses being afterwards 
to commence, God himself was pleased to 
manifest his presence and his complacency 
by two striking miracles : — 

At the moment when the ark of the cove- 

* This explains Luke i. 9. 



298 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



nant, having been brought in high procession 
from its former place in " the city of David," 
was deposited in the Holy of Holies, the 
numerous Levitical choirs thundered forth 
their well-known song, — sent to the heavens 
by their united voices, and by the harmo- 
nious concord of a thousand instruments : — 
" Praise J ehovah ! for he is good ; for his 
mercy endureth for ever ! " — Suddenly, as at 
the consecration of the first tabernacle, the 
house of God was covered with a thick cloud, 
which filled it, and which enveloped all the 
assistants in such profound obscurity that 
the priests were unable to continue their 
services. This was a manifest symbol that 
God had accepted this as his house, his 
palace, and that his Presence had entered to 
inhabit there. It was so understood by So- 
lomon, whose voice rose amidst the silence 
which ensued. " Jehovah said that he would 
dwell in the thick darkness. I have surely 
built thee an house to dwell in, a settled 
place for thee to abide in for ever ! " The 
king stood on a brazen platform which had 
been erected in front of the altar ; and now, 
turning to the people, he explained the 
origin and object of this building. After 
which "he spread forth his hands " towards 
the heavens to address himself to God. The 
prayer he offered on this occasion is one of 
the noblest and most sublime compositions 
in the Bible. It exhibits the most exalted 
conceptions of the omnipresence of God, and 
of his superintending providence ; and dwells 
more especially on his peculiar protection of 
the Hebrew nation, from the time of its de- 
parture from Egypt, and imploring pardon 
and forgiveness for all their sins and trans- 
gressions in the land, and during those en- 
suing captivities which, in the same pro- 
phetic spirit that animated the last address 
of Moses, he appears to have foreseen. No- 
thing can be finer than that part of his long 
and beautiful address, in which, recurring to 
the idea of inhabitance, which had been so 
forcibly brought before his mind, he cries — 
" But will God indeed dwell on the earth ? 
Behold, the heaven, and heaven of heavens 
cannot contain thee; how much less this 
house that I have builded ! " 

The king had no sooner concluded his 



prayer than a fire from the heavens descended 
upon the altar and consumed the burnt 
offerings. All the Israelites beheld this 
prodigy, and bent their faces towards the 
earth in adoration, and repeated with one 
voice the praise which was the most accept- 
able to Him : — " He is good : His mercy en- 
dureth for ever ! " 

By these two signs the sanctuary and the 
altar received the same acceptance and con- 
secration which had been granted in the 
wilderness to the tabernacle and the altar 
there. 

After this, the sacrifices were resumed, and 
countless victims were offered. During two 
consecutive weeks the people celebrated this 
great solemnity with unabated zeal. It was 
the year of jubilee, which had ^probably been 
chosen, as a season of general joy and leisure ; 
and hence the unusually great concourse to 
Jerusalem. In this year the jubilee feast 
was followed by that of tabernacles, which 
explains the duration of this great festival, 
beyond the seven days in which public fes- 
tivals usually terminated. On the last day 
of the second feast the king blessed the 
people, and dismissed them to their homes, 
to which they repaired, "joyful and glad of 
heart for all the goodness that Jehovah had 
done for David his servant, and for Israel his 
people." 

Solomon having thus worthily accom- 
plished the obligation imposed upon him by 
his father, felt himself at liberty to build 
various sumptuous structures, and undertake 
various works suited to the honour of his 
crown and the dignity of his great kingdom. 
All that can be said with reference to these will 
be little more than an amplification of his own 
statement on the subject : — " I raised magni- 
ficent works; I built for myself houses; I 
planted for myself vineyards; I made for 
myself gardens and groves, and planted in 
them fruit-trees of every kind ; I made also 
pools of water, to water therewith the grow- 
ing plantations. I bought men-servants and 
women-servants, and had servants born in 
my house ; I possessed also herds and flocks 
in abundance, more than any had before me 
in Jerusalem; I collected also silver and 
gold, and precious treasure from kings and 



CHAP. III.] 

provinces ; I procured men-singers and 
women-singers, and the sweetest instruments 
of music, the delight of the children of men. 
Thus I became great, and possessed more 
than any who had been before me in J eru- 
salem."* 

Of the royal buildings to which allusion is 
thus made, our more particular information 
is respecting the palace which the king built 
for himself, another for " Pharaoh's daugh- 
ter," and, "the house of the forest of Le- 
banon." It is difficult, from the brief inti- 
mations which the Scriptural history offers, 
to form a clear or connected idea of these 
buildings. The description of Josephus, 
although more precise, does not supply this 
deficiency; but by its assistance we may 
make out that the two palaces, for himself 
and the princess of Egypt, were not separate 
buildings ; but, as the existing arrangements 
in oriental palaces would suggest distinct 
parts or wings of the same building. It 
may assist the matter to understand that 
an oriental palace consists, for the most 
part, of a series of open quadrangles, with 
distinct appropriations, and each surrounded 
with buildings suitable to its appropriation. 
In fact, they are distinct buildings, connect- 
ed only by communicating doors, similar in 
their general plan to each other, but differing 
much in size and workmanship. The quad- 
rangle into which the gate of entrance opens, 
usually contains the state apartments and 
offices, principally the hall in which the 
sovereign gives audience, sits in judgment, 
and transacts all public business. Hence the 
court is very often called " the gate" of which 
we have a familiar instance in the Ottoman 
Porte, and of which examples are found in 
Scripture with reference to the courts of the 
Hebrew, Babylonian, and Persian kings t. 
Now, from the description of Josephus it 
would appear that the pal whole, 
consisted of three quadrangles, of which that 
in the centre contained the hall of audience 
and justice, and other state apartments, while 
that on the right hand formed the king's 
palace of residence, and that on the left was 

* Eccles. ii. 3—9, Boothroyd's version, 
t 2 Sam. xv. 2; Est. ii. 19,21, iii. 2, 3; Dan. ii. 49. 
Comp. Matt. xvi. 18; see also Xenop. Cyrop. i. 3; viii. 3. 



299 

the palace of the Egyptian princess. The 
only point on which we are in doubt, is 
whether the three quadrangles were on a line 
with each other, or that the one which con- 
tained the public halls was in advance of the 
others; for in this way, equally with the 
other, the palaces of the king and queen 
might be respectively described as to the 
right and left of the public building. There 
are some who think that " the house of the 
forest of Lebanon " was the same as this 
front or public portion of the whole pile; 
nor should we like absolutely to deny this, 
although it seems more probable that it was 
a royal residence in the neighbourhood of 
Jerusalem, deriving its name either from the 
number of cedar pillars which supported its 
galleries and halls, or from the plantations 
by which it was surrounded. These struc- 
tures were, for the most part, built with im- 
mense blocks of squared stones; and the 
whole was fitted up with cedar ; while the 
nobler rooms and galleries were lined with 
slabs of costly polished marble to the floor, 
and were above enriched with sculptures (on 
the wall), and apparently with paintings (on 
the plaster), especially towards the ceiling, 
all of which we may conclude to have been 
very much in the style of similar things 
among the Egyptians, whose palaces were 
decorated after the same style. And if we 
have rightly interpreted Josephus to inti- 
mate that there were three ranges of orna- 
ments in the principal rooms, — polished slabs 
at the bottom, sculpture above, and painting 
towards the top, it would be very easy to 
show how the same ideas and distributions 
are retained in the palaces of the modern 
East, where, above basement slabs of looking- 
glass, are wrought recesses, and carvings, and 
arabesques, and ornaments of stucco (sculp- 
ture being interdicted) ; while towards the 
ceiling much highly-coloured painting is 
displayed. If we may credit Josephus, 
" barbaric pearl and gold " were not wanting 
among the materials which contributed to 
the decoration of the more splendid apart- 
ments. The historian is at a loss for words 
to express the full conception, which the tra- 
ditions of his fathers had conveyed to his 
mind, of the splendours of Solomon's palatial 



SOLOMON. 



300 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



buildings : " It would be an endless task (be 
says) to give a particular survey of this 
mighty mass of building; so many courts 
and other contrivances ; such a variety of 
chambers and offices, great and small ; long 
and large galleries ; vast rooms of state, and 
others for feasting and entertainment, set out 
as richly as could be with costly furniture 
and gildings; besides, that all the services 
for the king's table were of pure gold. In a 
word, the whole palace was, in a manner, 
made up from the base to the coping, of 
white marble, cedar, gold, and silver, with 
precious stones here and there intermingled 
upon the walls and ceilings." * 

As the theory and practice of the govern- 
ment, and, indeed, of most oriental govern- 
ments, required the king, as supreme magis- 
trate, to be accessible to the complaints of 
all his subjects, the place in which Solomon 
administered justice was in the open porch 
of his palace, therefrom called " the porch of 
judgment." This was an obvious adaptation 
of the old, and there still (and even now)' 
subsisting practice of making "the gate" 
the seat of justice. The judgment porch 
of Solomon's palace we take to have been 
a large covered apartment, supported by 
pillars, and entirely open in front. It was 
seventy-five feet long by forty-five feet broad. 
Here, upon a raised platform, to which 
there was an ascent by steps, was placed the 
throne of Solomon, of which so much notice 
is taken in the Scriptural description and in 
that of Josephusf; from which, with the 
help of particulars preserved by early tra- 
ditions, we collect that to the raised dais, or 
platform, on which the throne rested, there 
was an ascent by six steps. The balustrade 
(so to speak) of these steps was formed by 
the figures of couching lions of gold, twelve 
in all, being two to each step. The throne 
itself was of ivory (a material which appears 
to have been unknown in Palestine until the 
time of Solomon), studded and enriched with 
gold, and over it was a semi-spherical canopy. 
Besides the twelve lions on the six steps of 
ascent, there were two as " stays " on each 
side of the seat, the back of which appears 
to have been concave. J 

* Antiq. viii. 5. 2. j Ibid. % See 1 Kings x. 18—20. 




[Throne with steps.] 

furnish, but for the sake of the demonstration 
which they offer of the high pitch to which 
the arts of domestic civilization had, at a 
very early date, attained among the next 
neighbours (and now friends and allies) of 
the Israelites. They form the first class of 
seats among that people, and whether we 
look to the elegance and convenience of their 
forms, their exquisite workmanship, or the 
richness of their materials, it is difficult to 
say in what they are surpassed by modern 
art. The illustrative points, with reference 
to the seat of Solomon's throne, are afforded 
by the lion, and by the concavity of the 
back, — points which did not escape the 
notice of Sir J. Gr. Wilkinson, as cited below. 
To which we may add that the frames of 
some of these fauteuils are coloured yellow 
in the pictures of them in the royal tombs, 
from which the example is copied, suggesting 
that they were overlaid with gold, or, at the 



Now although, for its cost and materials, 
the like of this throne " had not been made 
in any kingdom," it is easy to show the 
correspondence of its general plan and i 
details with those of the thrones of the 
ancient and modern East. The annexed 
engraving, representing the sort of throne 
on which gods and kings are most usually 
seated in the Egyptian sculptures, evinces 
that the throne, as a raised platform or dais, 
was common among that people ; and to this 
dais was usually an ascent by steps. There 
is another class of Egyptian seats, which we 
introduce to the reader's notice, not only 
on account of the illustration which they 



SOLOMOy. 



301 




[Egyptian Fauteuil *.J 

least, gilded. The lions are always, and the 
other ornamental parts are often, coloured 
yellow, even when the rest is of a different 
colour, confirming the probability of the 
intention to represent gold. 

On the walls of the hall in which the 
throne was placed were probably hung the 
300 shields of gold (or probably of wood or 
hide, covered with gold) which the king 
caused to be made, and which are mentioned 
among the proudest treasures of the kingdom. 
There were 200 other shields, of the same 
costly material, and twice as large, which 
were for the use of the royal guard ; for, as 
we shall see presently, the state of the king 
in his court and in his going forth, was fully 
commensurate to the magnificence of his 
palaces. 

* Sir J. G. Wilkinson observes with reference to this 
I class of seats, " the back of the chair was equally high 
i and strong. It was occasionally concave, like some Roman 
i chairs, or the throne of Solomon (1 Kings x. 19); and in 
[ many of the large fauteuils, a lion forms an arm at each 

side. But the back usually consisted of a single set of up- 
! right and cross bars, or of a frame, receding gracefully, 
: and terminating at its summit in a graceful curve, sup- 
| ported from without by perpendicular bars ; and over this 
| was thrown a handsome pillow of coloured cotton, painted 
j leather, or gold and silver tissue, like the beds at the feast 
; of Ahasuerus, mentioned in Esther (i. 6) ; or like the 

feather cushions covered with stuffs, and embroidered with 

silk threads of gold, in the palace of Scaurus." — ' Ancient 

Egyptians,' vol. ii. p. 196. 



With commendable zeal, Solomon had 
hastened the completion of the temple; but 
he allowed nearly twice the time to be 
consumed on the palatial structures which 
have engaged our notice. The temple was 
finished in seven years; but thirteen years 
were employed on the palaces; so that it 
was not until the twentieth year that the 
whole was completed. But for the erection 
of the temple, all the means had been pro- 
vided by David ; whereas Solomon had 
himself to provide for his own buildings. 
And this probably explains the difference; 
for that, with all his resources, the king's 
plans outran his means, is evinced by the 
fact that besides assistance of the same sort 
which he had rendered towards the building 
of the temple, the king of Tyre had, by the 
time the works were completed, advanced to 
Solomon not less than 120 talents of goldf , 
in recompense of which the king of Israel 
assigned to him twenty towns in the vicinity 
of the Tyrian territory. He seems, however, 
to have made the mistake of considering 
that what was good in the eyes of the 
Hebrews, must be equally good for the 
Tyrians, who would doubtless much have 
preferred an extension of their territory 
along the coast to this comparatively inland 
and agricultural district. Hiram, when he 
came to view the ground, saw at once the 
unsuitableness, and indicated his dissatisfac- 
tion by the name of Cabul which he imposed 
upon it. Solomon, therefore, took back these 
towns, and doubtless gave the king of Tyre 
some more satisfying equivalent ; for the 
transaction was very far from interrupting 
the good understanding between the two 
kings. 

It was doubtless from the considerations 
arising from his connection with king Hiram, 
and from narrowly observing the sources of 
the extraordinary prosperity enjoyed by the 
Phoenician state, coupled with the want of 
adequate means for the execution of the 
magnificent plans which his mind had 
formed, that Solomon began to turn his own 
attention to foreign commerce, as a source 

t This, at the usual reckoning of sixteen talents of silver 
to one of gold, which is therefore equal to 6000/., would 
make 720,000/. 



302 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IY. 



of wealth and aggrandisement. We are 
unacquainted with the particular induce- 
ments which Solomon was able to offer to 
the Phoenicians, who were in this matter 
proverbially a jealous people, to induce 
them to afford the benefit of their experience 
in this enterprise. But it is certain that 
they furnished the king with ships, such as 
they employed in their distant voyages 
westward, and therefore called " ships of 
Tarshish," and that these ships were manned 
by Phoenician mariners, and voyaged in com- 
pany with a fleet of ships belonging to the 
king of Tyre. That they must have had 
very cogent reasons for this, — for allowing 
themselves to be made the instruments of 
enriching the Hebrew king by traffic with 
foreign parts — no one who is acquainted 
with the historical character of that people, 
or with the commercial character in general, 
will in the least degree doubt. In seeking 
the motive by which their proceedings were 
determined, we must consider the direction 
of the voyage. In another work* we have 
exhibited our reasons for concluding that 
the regions of Tarshish and Ophir lay not in 
different directions, but were visited in the 
same voyage ; and further that this voyage 
embraced the southern shores of Arabia, the 
eastern shores of Africa, and possibly the 
isle of Ceylon, if not some points in the 
Indian peninsula. This being the case, we 
shall perceive that although the Phoenicians 
had the exclusive command of the westward 
traffic, on the Mediterranean and Atlantic 
coasts, they could have had no share in this 
eastern traffic but on such terms as Solomon 
might think proper to impose. For he was 
in possession of the ports of the Elanitic 
Gulf, and of the intervening country, 
whereby he held the key of the Red Sea, 
and could at his pleasure exclude them from 
that door of access to the Indian Ocean. It 
is true that there was another door, by the 
Gulf of Suez ; but its ports were in the 
hands of the Egyptians, who were by no 
means likely to allow unobstructed access to 
it. And then, as to the other channel, 
across the desert to the Euphrates and 
Persian Gulf, the key of this also was in the 

* * Pictorial Bible,' Notes on 2 Chron. ix. 10, 21. 



hand of Solomon, by virtue of his military 
stations on the Euphrates, and his complete 
command of the desert country west of that 
river. It may thus appear that since the 
Phoenicians could have no access to the 
Indian Ocean but with the consent and by 
the assistance of the Hebrew king, he was in 
a condition to stipulate for a profitable part- 
nership in the enterprise. Nor perhaps was 
he so entirely dependent upon the Phoe- 
nicians for the execution of his plans, as 
might at first sight appear: for although 
the Israelites knew little of maritime affairs, 
this was not the case with the Edomites, 
who were now the subjects of Solomon. 
They had been accustomed to navigate the 
Red Sea, and probably to some extent 
beyond ; and although we know not that 
they reached the shores to which, under the 
abler guidance of the Phoenicians, the fleets 
of Solomon penetrated, they probably might 
have been made, with a little encouragement, 
the instruments of his designs. In preferring 
the Phoenicians, Solomon was probably in- 
fluenced, not only by the knowledge of their 
greater experience in distant voyages, but 
by political considerations, which might 
suggest that he could always control this 
trade as conducted by the Phoenicians, while 
to the Edomites, living on the borders of the 
Elanitic Gulf, it would give such advantages 
as might in time enable them to engross 
the whole trade, and to shake off the yoke 
his father had imposed upon them. 

The interest which the king took in the 
matter, may be judged of from the fact that 
he went in person to the port of Ezion-geber, 
at the head of the gulf, to superintend the 
preparations and to witness the departure of 
the fleet. 

A thirst for knowledge, which is one of 
the surest evidences of the "wisdom" with 
which this splendid monarch was gifted, 
may have had some share in promoting this 
design ; for his agents were instructed, not 
only to seek wealth, but to bring back 
specimens of whatever was curious or in- 
structive in the countries to which they 
came. We know they brought various 
foreign animals and birds ; and since the 
king took much interest in botany, it is 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



303 



more than likely that they also brought the 
seeds of many plants which had engaged 
their attention by their use or beauty ; and 
that consequently we may refer to this reign 
the introduction into Palestine of many 
plants which had not been known there in 
former times. 

The fleet returned in the third year, laden 
with the rich and curious treasures of the 
south and the remote east. There were vast 
quantities of gold and silver, while the bulk 
of the cargo was composed of elephants' 
teeth, and various sorts of valuable woods 
and precious stones. Nor were the super- 
cargoes which the king sent in the ships 
unmindful of his peculiar tastes, and pro- 
bably his special orders, for they took pains 
to collect examples of the more curious 
animals, and doubtless other products, of the 
countries to which they came. Among 
these, monkeys and peacocks are particularly 
named — probably from their more singular 
difference from the forms of animal life with 
which the Hebrews were previously ac- 
quainted. 

Without doubt, a large portion of the 
commodities thus obtained were sold at a 
great profit. And this explains that while 
in one place the yearly weight of gold 
brought to the king, by his ships, is stated 
at 480 talents, the yearly profit in gold 
derived both directly and indirectly from 
these voyages, is counted at the weight of 
666 talents*, which according to the lower 
computation would make not less than 
3,646,350^., while a higher scale would make 
it little short of 4,000,000^. 

Of the precious woods, Solomon employed 
a considerable portion in making balustrades 
for the temple, and in the fabrication of 
instruments of music. And of the gold, a 
large quantity was used in making various 
sorts of golden shields, and the various 
vessels of the palace. In that palace all the 
vessels were of gold; silver was not seen 
there : for under the influx of gold as well 
as of silver, from various sources, the latter 
metal was much depreciated in value during 
this splendid reign: — "It was nothing ac- 
counted of in the days of Solomon ; 

* Compare 1 Kings ix. 28 with x. 14. 



he made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones." 
And, in like manner, the rather poor wood of 
the cedar, which had previously, in the want 
of large and good timber, acquired a high 
value, sunk much in estimation, through the 
large importations of the compact and 
beautiful eastern timbers, as well as through 
the profuse supply of cedar-wood itself from 
Lebanon. 

Besides this maritime traffic the caravan 
trade by land engaged a full share of 
Solomon's attention. By the possession of a 
southern frontier stretching across from the 
Elanitic Gulf to the Mediterranean, the land 
traffic between Egypt and Syria lay com- 
pletely at his mercy. He felt this, and 
through some arrangement with his father- 
in-law the king of Egypt, he contrived to 
monopolise it entirely in his own hands. It 
appears that what Syria chiefly required 
from Egypt were linen fabrics and yarn, for 
the manufacture of which that country had 
long been celebrated ; also chariots, the 
extensive use of which in Egypt has already 
been pointed out ; and horses, of which that 
country possessed a very excellent and su- 
perior breed, if we may judge from the 
numerous fine examples which the paintings 
and sculptures offer. All this trade Solomon 
appears to have intercepted and monopolised. 
He was supplied by contract, at a fixed 
price, with certain quantities adequate to 
the supply of the Syrian market, which, 
after retaining what he required for himself, 
his factors sold, of course at a high profit, to 
the different kings of Syria. The price was 
doubtless arbitrary, and dependent on times 
and circumstances; but the contract price 
at which the chariots and horses were 
supplied by the Egyptians to the Hebrew 
factors happens to be named,— 600 silver 
shekels f for a chariot, and one-fourth of 
that sum, or 150 shekels, for a horse. 

This was not the only land traffic which 
engaged the notice of Solomon. His attention 
was attracted to the extensive and valuable 
caravan trade which, from very remote ages, 
coming from the farther east, and the Persian 
Gulf, proceeded to Egypt, Tyre, and other 
point s on the Mediterranean, by the Euphrates 
♦ Or75i 



304 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



and across the great Syrian desert. The habit- 
able points of that desert, even to the great 
river, were now under the dominion of the 
Hebrew king, and even the Bedouin tribes by 
whom it was chiefly inhabited were brought 
under tribute to him, and were kept in order 
by the dread of his great name. Under these 
circumstances, Solomon was in nearly as 
favourable a position for taking a part in 
this trade as in the land traffic between 
Egypt and Syria. But the measures which 
he took .were different, and more specially 
adapted to the circumstances of the case. 
They were less coercive, and dealt more in 
the offer of inducements and advantages. 
And the reason is obvious ; for although the 
ordinary track of the great caravans lay 
through his territories, it was in the power 
of its conductors to alter that tract so as to 
pass northward beyond the limits of his 
dominion ; but this would have produced 
such expense, trouble and delay, that it 
would have been preferable to maintain the 
old route even at the expense of some check 
and inconvenience. Whether the measures 
of Solomon were felt to be such we do not 
know; they were possibly deemed by the 
caravan merchants and by the Hebrews, as 
mutually advantageous, although the ul- 
timate purchasers, who could be no parties 
in this arrangement, possibly regarded them 
in a different light. The plan of Solomon 
was to erect in the very heart of the desert 
an emporium for this important trade. The 
route of a caravan is so directed as to include 
as many as possible of the places at which 
water may be found. At the most important 
of these stations, where water, and by con- 
sequence palm-trees, was found in the most 
abundance, the Hebrew king built a city 
and called it Tadmor (a palm-tree), whence 
its Greek name of Palmyra. But Greek and 
Roman names never fixed themselves in the 
soil of Syria, and the ruins of the city bear, 
to this day, among the natives, the primitive 
name of Tadmor. Here the caravans not 
only found water as before, but every ad- 
vantage of shelter and rest, while by this 
establishment Solomon was enabled more 
effectively to overawe the tribes, and to 
afford protection to the caravans from the | 



predatory attempts and exactions of the 
Bedouins. Here the caravan merchants 
would soon find it convenient to dispose of 
their commodities, and leave the further 
distribution of them, to the nations west of 
the desert, either to the factors of Solomon, 
or to private merchants, — for we do not 
know to what extent the king found it 
advisable to leave this trade free to his own 
subjects. It may be that private persons 
among his subjects, or even foreigners from 
the west, were not prevented from here 
meeting and dealing with the eastern mer- 
chants ; but from the general — and with our 
present lights, we must say short-sighted — 
policy of Solomon's commercial doings, it 
may be inferred that he monopolised such 
advantages in this trade as he deemed safe 
or prudent. At the least, it must be pre- 
sumed that he derived considerable revenue, 
in the way of customs, from such merchan- 
dise as did not pass into the hands of his 
own factors: and this, however advantageous 
to the king, may have been felt by the 
caravan merchants but as a reasonable 
equivalent for the protection they enjoyed, 
and their freedom from the exactions of the 
Bedouins. Much of this, which we have 
stated as probably connected with the foun- 
dation of this city of the desert, is not stated 
in Scripture: but it is deducible from the 
improbability that, without strong induce- 
ments, a city would have been founded in 
such a situation, and from the detection of 
these inducements in the commercial enter- 
prises of Solomon, with the illustration 
applied to the particular instance, which 
is derivable from the fact that the wealth 
and glory in which the Palmyra of a later 
day appears, was due entirely to the circum- 
stance that its position made it an emporium 
for the caravan trade of the desert. In fact, 
that it was such at a long subsequent date, 
and that its very existence depended on its 
being such, illustrates and justifies that 
intention in its foundation which, on the 
strongest circumstantial evidence, we have 
ventured to ascribe to Solomon. 

Besides these branches of commerce, " the 
traffic of the spice merchants'' is mentioned* 

* 1 Kings x. 15. 



chap, in.] 

among the sources from which wealth 
accrued to Solomon. In what form this pro- 
fit was derived is not distinctly intimated. 
From the analogy of his other operations, we 
might conclude that he bought up the costly 
spices and aromatics brought by the spice 
caravans of southernmost Arabia, which must 
needs pass through his territories ; and that, 
after deducting what sufficed for the large 
consumption of his own nation, he sold the 
residue at an enhanced price to the neigh- 
bouring nations. As it is certain that, from 
his own wants merely, an act of trade must 
have taken place between him and these 
caravans, this seems the more obvious con- 
clusion, although, without this, he may have 
derived an important item of profit from this 
trade by levying customs upon it in its pas- 
sage through his dominions. 

Such, as far as they can be traced, were 
the commercial operations of Solomon. It is 
quite easy now, and in a commercial country 
like our own, to see that these operations 
were, for the most part, based on wrong 
views and principles, inasmuch as, however 
they might tend to the aggrandisement of 
the king, they could confer little solid and 
enduring benefit on the nation. But in the 
East, where the king is the state, and be- 
comes himself the centre of most public acts, 
he is seldom found to take interest in com- 
merce, but from regarding it as a source of 
emolument to the state, by his direct and 
personal concern therein. The king himself 
is a trader, with such advantages resulting 
from his position, as inevitably exclude the 
private merchant from the field in which he 
appears. He is inevitably a monopolist ; and 
a sovereign monopoly is, if not an evil, at 
least not a benefit to the people, whatever 
wealth it may seem to bring into the coun- 
try. The river, however noble, gives fertil- 
ity only to the banks which hem it in ; and 
it is only when its waters are drawn off in 
their course, and exhausted into a thousand 
channels, that they bless and glorify the 
wide country around. Solomon, in his Book 
of Ecclesiastes, acquaints us with many 
"vanities" and "sore evils" which he saw 
" under the sun ;" but from this statement 
we do not learn that he ever became con- 



305 

scious of the very great vanity and most 
sore evil of a rich king over a poor people, 
or of the system which makes the king rich 
while the people remain comparatively poor. 

M. Salvador *, in a very interesting chap- 
ter on the subject of the Hebrew commerce, 
appears to approve of the traffic which was 
opened in this reign with Tyre, Egypt, and 
Syria ; but the distant voyages to Ophir are 
justly represented by him as standing on a 
different ground, although the important 
consideration to which we have adverted 
escaped his notice. He considers that in 
this enterprise, the limits which both nature 
and sound policy had fixed to the Hebrew 
commerce were, by a most unwise ambition, 
overpassed. It is not, he remarks, sufficient 
to imagine or even to execute, great things ; 
it is necessary that they should be suited to 
times and circumstances, it is necessary to 
consolidate them. And this was a wisdom 
which Solomon wanted. The commerce of 
Israel should have been simply a commerce 
of commission and transit. The territorial 
wealth of the country afforded the means of 
accomplishing this with great advantage. 
Besides the commercial advantages, the 
country had numerous outlets for all its 
agricultural products ; and afterwards it en- 
joyed a good market for foreign products, 
the transport, which is in general most ex- 
pensive, being effected almost without real 
cost by the returning merchants. But instead 
of confining himself to these obvious sources 
of profit, Solomon was incited by his vanity, 
and by the example of the Tyrians, to send 
forth numerous fleets at a vast cost. The 
success of these expeditions introduced a 
disproportionate luxury into Jerusalem, re- 
placing there the rich simplicity of life 
which had previously characterised the He- 
brew nation. A court, organised on the most 
splendid oriental models, — a vast seraglio, a 
sumptuous table, officers without number, 
and hosts of avidious concubines, afflicted a 
country in which the balance of conditions 
and property, as established by Moses, ought 
to have been maintained with the most 
jealous exactitude. 

To this M. Salvador attributes many evils, 

* ' Institutions de Moi'se,' tome i. ch. vi. 



SOLOMON. 



X 



306 



THE BIULE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



■which we shall not anticipate our narrative 
by repeating here. It will be obvious, how- 
ever, that whatever evils .arose from this 
traffic, should not, in this fashion, be attri- 
buted to the trade itself, or even to the 
wealth which it brought into the country, 
but to the mistaken principle on which that 
trade was conducted, and to the unprofitable 
absorption into the royal treasury of the 
wealth which it produced. 

Traffic and imposts on traffic, were not, 
however, the only sources from which Solo- 
mon obtained his wealth. Large revenues 
were derived from the annual tributes of the 
foreign states, which were now subject to 
the Hebrew sceptre, or over which it exer- 
cised a more or less stringent influence. The 
kings and princes of such states appear to 
have sent their tribute in the form of quan- 
tities of the principal articles which their 
country produced, or was able to procure ; as 
did also the governors of the provinces not 
left under the native princes. Besides the 
regular tax or tribute derived from countries 
more or less closely annexed to the Hebrew 
kingdom, there were more distant states 
which found it good policy to conciliate the 
favour of Solomon, or to avert his hostility 
by annual offerings, which, under the soft 
name of " presents," formed no contemptible 
item of the royal revenue. Of that revenue 
one item is mentioned in rather singular 
terras : — " All the earth sought to Solomon to 
hear his wisdom, which God had put in his 
heart. And they brought every man his 
present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, 
and garments, and armour, and spices, horses 
and mules, a rate year by year." Here the 
terms " presents," and " a rate year by year," 
have a degree of opposition at the first view, 
which seems to require us to suppose either 
that those great men who had once resorted 
to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of Solomon, 
and to behold the manifestation of it in the 
ordering of his court and kingdom, not only 
brought with them the presents which the 
usages of the East rendered the necessary 
accompaniments of such visits, but that they 
continued to send from their several lands 
t yearly gifts of compliments to him. Or else, 
! that the desire of thus complimenting the 



monarch whom God had so eminently gifted, 
furnished a decent pretence to those who 
had other reasons for rendering a real tribute 
to him. The latter interpretation is that 
which we prefer. And it is certain that in 
the case of the only royal visit which is par- 
ticularly described — that of the Queen of 
Sheba — only such presents as she brought 
with her are named, and no " rate year by 
year" is intimated. Ethiopia was too remote 
to be within reach of the influences which 
may have determined the monarchs of nearer 
nations to make their "presents" to Solomon 
a yearly payment. 

The articles mentioned in the extract just 
given, together with those named in other 
places, enable us to form some idea of the 
display which these annual or occasional 
renderings of tributes and of traffics must 
have offered. It has been the fashion of the 
East to make a show of such offerings by 
their being taken in procession to the palace 
of the king by the persons, arrayed in their 
varied costumes, by whom they were brought 
to the country. To this custom we have 
more than once had occasion to allude in the 
course of the present work. Many were the 
spectacles of this sort which must have de- 
lighted the eyes of the Israelites during the 
splendid reign of Solomon. There are paint- 
ings of Egypt, and sculptures of Persia, which 
enable us to form some idea of these im- 
posing exhibitions, which indeed are in 
strict correspondence with those which the 
courts of the East have still preserved. Of 
the representations to which we allude, the 
former is no less interesting and instructive 
from the details which it offers, than venera- 
ble from its high antiquity. It is at Thebes ; 
and represents the ambassadors of four na- 
tions bringing their tributes to Thothmes 
III., whose reign Sir J. G. Wilkinson ascribes 
to the time of the departure of the Israelites 
from Egypt. It is remarkable that the classes 
of articles brought by the foreigners are all 
such as would be included in the classes of 
products rendered to Solomon. The articles 
vary with the country and costume of the 
nation by which they are brought. We see 
principally gold and silver money in rings ; 
vases and other utensils of the same metal, 



r — 

CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMOX. 



307 



of very various and often truly elegant 
shapes ; baskets containing sealed bags, pro- 
bably of jewels ; baskets of fruits, carefully 
packed and covered with leaves to preserve 
their freshness ; growing plants, — in one in- 
stance we see a shrub transported in a grow- 
ing state: it is enclosed with the mould in 
which it grows, in a kind of open case, which is 
carried between two men suspended from a 
pole, the ends of which rest on their shoulders. 
Then there are elephants' teeth, and beams 
of ebony and other valuable woods ; and, be- 
sides the skins of various animals, particu- 
larly leopards, there is a most interesting ex- 
hibition of various living animals conducted 
to the king. Among these are giraffes, 
various w ell-distinguished species of apes 
and monkeys, leopards, and even bears. 
There were also oxen, of a different breed 
to that common in the country, as were pro- 
bably the horses, which also figure in the 
procession, and which, with chariots, form 
perhaps the most remarkable objects of the 
whole, as being brought to a country which 
itself abounded in horses and chariots ; but 
the horses were probably desirable to the 
Egyptians as of a foreign breed, and the 
chariots as a curious foreign manufacture. 
Upon the whole, a more striking and appro- 
priate illustration of this part of Solomon's 
glory cannot well be imagined. 

The wealth which flowed into the royal 
treasury from these various sources appears 
to have been freely disbursed by Solomon in 
enriching his buildings, in extending their 
number, and in the ordering of his court and 
kingdom. Besides the buildings which have 
already been pointed out, various public 
structures were built by him in Jerusalem, 
which city he also enclosed by new walls, 
fortified with strong towers. Other impor- 
tant towns (as Gaza) were fortified, and new 
ones built in different parts of the country. 
Besides Tadmor, which has already engaged 
our notice, Baalath is named among the 
towns built by him ; and this is supposed by 
many to be no other than the afterwards 
celebrated city of Baalbec, in the great valley 
of Coele-Syria. 

The account which is given of the internal 
organization of Solomon's kingdom occurs 



I prior even to that which describes the build- 
j ing of the Temple*. But there is reason to 
think that these arrangements did not, until 
a later date, assume the completed form in 
which they are there exhibited. The state- 
ment at the first view contains little more 
than a list of officers. But on closer inspec- 
tion it will be found that even such a list is 
suggestive of an orderly arrangement and 
distribution of functions, as well as of the 
nature of what was considered public busi- 
ness. If it should be observed that most of 
these have reference to the supply of the 
wants of the court and the maintenance of 
the royal authority, it must be admitted 
that these are practically the chief objects 
of oriental governments. However, we shall 
perceive that in all states such offices make 
the most conspicuous figure to the eye of the 
spectator, which, if it penetrates more deep- 
ly, may discover that adequate provision is 
nevertheless made, through the working of 
some recognised and unostentatious system, 
and through the ministration of less splendid 
functionaries, for the well being and the good 
government of the people. The internal 
polity of the constitution, as organized by 
the institutions of Moses, joined to the prin- 
ciples of patriarchal government still at work 
in the several tribes, might seem adequate to 
every purpose of internal government. And 
whatever might be thus left wanting, was 
supplied by the regulation of David, to 
which Solomon himself gave effect, appoint- 
ing Levitical "judges and officers through- 
out the land." 

The list, as given in the sacred narrative, 
has rather a formal appearance ; and in the 
usual way in which such lists are prepared, 
begins with the king himself, — " So king 
Solomon was king over all Israel," and then 
proceeds to enumerate the officers of his go- 
vernment. 

Azariah, the son (or rather grandson) of 
Zadok the high-priest, and two others, the 
sons of Sheva, were the Scribes. This Sheva, 
the father, had been sole scribe in the time 
of David ; and that three persons were now 
required in this office, seems to show either 
the great increase of business which the 

* 1 Kings iv. 

x 2 



308 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



arrangements of Solomon threw into this 
department, or some improved views as to 
the distribution of labour. These appear to 
have been the royal secretaries, through 
whom ail the king's more formal commands 
were issued, and who registered all public 
acts and decrees *. 

The office of Recorder was occupied under 
Solomon by Jehoshaphat the son of the per- 
son (Ahilud) who had held it in the time of 
David. The marginal renderings in our 
Bibles, "a remembrancer, or a writer of 
chronicles," help to convey a notion of this 
office. The only difficulty is in drawing the 
line clearly between the functions of the re- 
corder and those of the scribes. But his 
functions appear to have been of a less tem- 
porary nature than theirs ; it being rather 
his business to give the form of permanent 
records or chronicles to the occurrences of 
his time, particularly such as related to the 
king and court. In oriental courts this was 
an office of great trust and importance. The 
records formed by these officers in the He- 
brew court, probably furnished the materials 
from which the Books of Kings and Chroni- 
cles were compiled ; and the two books of 
the latter perhaps exhibit nearly the form of 
the original documents f, 

The office of Captain op the Host has 
been brought historically under our notice 
in sufficient prominence to render any sepa- 
rate statement unnecessary. 

The King's Friend, or Companion, seems 
to have been very nearly what we under- 
stand by the term Favourite, as distinguished 
from the responsible chief minister. From 
the connection in which it occurs, it seems 
that this person was admitted to the pe- 
culiar intimacy of the king, was in all his 
secrets, and conversed familiarly with him. 
Sometimes a person holding no public office 
enjoyed these privileges ; but we at other 
times find it associated with some important 
office in the state. So it was under Solomon, 
whose own Friend, Zabud, a son of the pro- 
phet Nathan, was also " the chief officer," 

* See 2 Sam. viii. 17, xx. 25; 1 Kings iv. 3; 2 Kings 
xvin. 18, 37; Isa. xxxvi. 3. 

t See 2 Sam. viii. 16, xx. 24; 1 Kings iv. 3; 2 Kings 
xviii. 18, 37; 2 Chron. xviii. 15; Isa. xxxvi. 3; Est. iii. 12, 
vi. 1, x. 2. Comp. Herodot. vi. 100, vii. 9, viii. 90. 



which appears to point him out as what w r e 
call the prime minister. Hushai, without 
any such office, was " the king's friend," in 
the time of David ; and very worthily did he 
support that character. In later times the 
term came to be used in a more general 
sense, as applied to any one employed to 
execute the royal commands, or holding a 
high office in the state J. 

The Prime Minister, as we should call 
him, appears to be the person who is de- 
scribed in Scripture as " next (or, literally, 
second) to the king'' 1 Solomon had no officer 
thus indicated; but, as we have just intimated, 
Zabud appears to have enjoyed the office. 
This was the office which the excellent Jona- 
than was willing to occupy under David — 
" Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall 
be next unto thee ;" §' but which in that reign 
would appear to have been really filled by 
one or more of the king's own sons ; for it is 
said, " The sons of David were chief about 
the king." 1 1 This office was of the highest 
antiquity in the different eastern courts ; 
Joseph filled it in the court of Egypt, and 
Hainan in that of Persia IT. 

The Royal Counsellors are persons of 
whom we possess but slight information. 
They appear to have been persons of great 
experience, of which the king found it expe- 
dient to avail himself on occasions of im- 
portance. The most marked instances are 
those in which Absalom called the council to 
consult about the measures to be taken 
against David ; when the young prince im- 
plicitly followed the course which seemed 
the best to his council. It is clear that 
David had such a council, as some of the 
counsellors are named. But that Solomon 
had one, does not appear till after his death, 
when his weak and headstrong son consulted 
" the old men that had stood before Solomon 
his father while he yet lived ;" but fatally 
rejected their discreet council, and preferred 
that of his own self-willed contemporaries. 
Of course the king took counsel with the 
officers of state respecting the matters con- 

X 2 Sam. xv. 37, xvi. 16; 1 Kings iv. 5; 1 Mace. x. 63, 
xi. 26, 27. 
§ 1 Sam. xxiii. 17. 
H 1 Chron. xviii. 17. 

If Gen. xli. 40, 43; Est. iii. 1. See also 2 Chron. xxyiii. 7. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



309 



nected with their several offices; but on 
matters of general policy, the council appears 
to have been consulted; and such of the 
counsellors whose names occur in the history 
did not hold any administrative office in the 
state. In the time of David, Ahithophel was 
one; Hushai, the king 's friend, another; and 
Jonathan, David's uncle, appears to have 
been a third *. 

An eastern king never takes any step 
without consulting an astrologer, who is 
supposed to have the means of ascertaining 
the result of the proposed actions, or at least 
to know the propitious moments for their 
commencement. In ancient times kings 
sought to learn the will of heaven not only 
through astrologers, but through priests, 
augurs, and diviners. This example was fol- 
lowed by the ill-disposed and idolatrous He- 
brew kings ; but the faithful vicegerents of 
Jehovah were heedful to consult one of his 
prophets on every occasion of importance, 
that through him they might learn whether 
the course which they had in view was ac- 
ceptable to the Great King. To Him this 
reference and becoming acknowledgment 
that his sovereignty was a reality, was 
highly acceptable. Indeed, the Lord was not 
unmindful to enforce his own rights as the 
true political head of the Hebrew state, by 
directing his prophets to give his orders or 
his counsel to those kings who were so un- 
mindful of their true position as to neglect 
to seek for either. Under the monarchy, 
therefore, the prophet occupied the impor- 
tant position of agent for communicating 
to the human king the orders, and making 
known to him the will, of the King Jehovah, 
his political superior in the Hebrew state, to 
whom he owed allegiance, and whom he 
was bound by the very tenure of his office to 
obey. It is remarkable that, under the 
monarchy, there is no instance after the 
reign of Saul, in which the will of Jehovah 
was made known by Urim and by Thummim, 
as in former times. It will be seen that, in 
this point of view, the Prophet was in fact a 
functionary of very high political importance 
in the Hebrew state. 

* 2 Sam. xvi. 15—23, xvii.; 1 Kings xii. 6; 1 Chron. 
xxvii. 32, 33; Isa. iii. 3, xix. 11, 12; Jer. xxvi. 11. 



The person who was "over the tribute'''' 
appears to have been over those who collected 
all taxes and tributes, whether from the 
native Israelites, or from subjected states; 
and who received the amount and consigned 
it to the treasure-chambers of the king. It 
would thus appear that his office answered 
in some degree to that of our Chancellor of 
the Exchequer. The same person, Adoram, 
was over the tribute, in the reigns both of 
David and Solomon +. 

The names of the Managers of the Crown 
Property do not occur in the list of Solomon's 
officers; but we find them in the time of 
David, as they were doubtless preserved in 
that of his son, who had, in fact, more need 
of them. The list is valuable and interest- 
ing, as it affords information concerning 
what may be called the private property of 
the crown, as distinguished from the revenues 
of the state. It is as follows :— " Over the 
king's treasures was Azmaveth, the son of 
Adiel : and over the storehouses, in the fields, 
in the cities, in the villages, and in the 
castles, was Jehonathan, the son of Uzziah. 
And over them that did the work of the field 
for tillage of the ground, was Ezri, the son 
of Chelub. And over the vineyards was 
Shimei, the Ramathite : over the increase of 
the vineyards, for the wine cellars, was 
Zabdi, the Shiphmite. And over the olive- 
trees and the sycamore-trees that were 
in the low plains, was Baal-hanan, the 
Gederite; and over the cellars of oil was 
Joash. And over the herds that fed in 
Sharon, was Shitrai, the Sharonite; and 
over the herds that were in the valleys, was 
Shaphat, the son of Adlai. Over the camels 
also was Obil, an Ishmaelite (a Bedouin) ; 
and over the asses was J ehdeiah, the Mero- 
nothite. And over the flocks was Jaziz, the 
Hagerite (an Arab). All these were the 
rulers of the substance which was king 
David's." % 

Here we have the indication of sources of 
revenue with which we should not otherwise 
have been acquainted. As to the flocks, 
besides this statement, the reader may refer 
to 1 Sam. xxi. 7 ; 2 Sam. xiii. 23 ; by which 

t 2 Sam. xx. 24; 1 Kings iv. 6. 
i 1 Chron. xxvii. 25—31. 



310 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



it will appear that there was such a property 
early in the reign of Saul ; and that, under 
David, the sons of the king had possessions 
of this nature. There are so many obvious 
ways by which such a property might be 
formed, without interference with any known 
right or principle, that no inquiry on the 
subject is necessary. Michaelis collects from 
the passage we have quoted, that, as both 
king and subjects had the right of pasture 
in the Arabian deserts, David kept numerous 
herds there, which were partly under the 
care of Arabian herdsmen. 

Another branch of property here indicated 
offers a subject of inquiry of far greater 
interest. It is obvious that even as early as 
David's reign, there was an extensive and 
valuable property in land attached to the 
crown, consisting of arable lands, vineyards, 
plantations of the olive and sycamore, &c. 
And the question is, how such a possession 
could be collected in a country where the 
land was strictly entailed upon the descend- 
ants of the original possessors, and could 
not, in perpetuity, be sold. How this law 
might be infringed, it is unnecessary to indi- 
cate ; but it is of importance to see that a 
royal demesne might be formed without any 
interference with its operation. In the first 
place, there was land in the hands of the 
descendants of the Canaanites, which had 
not been included in the original distribu- 
tions of the soil as made by Joshua, and 
which might be acquired by purchase from 
the owners. In fact, the site of the temple 
was thus purchased by David from Araunah 
the Jebusite. It also appears that, in prac- 
tice, although we apprehend that the strict 
principle of the law would scarcely justify 
it, the lands of persons executed for offences 
against the state were estreated to the 
crown : and this, as the only means by which 
the king could, with any show of legal pre- 
tence, acquire property already in the hands 
of an Israelite, led to grievous injustice and 
oppression on the part of unscrupulous kings. 
Then, again, in the East, waste uncultivated 
lands are considered to belong to no one in 
particular. They are called " God's lands," 
and become the particular property of the 
persons who first bring them into cultivation. 



Now, the superior command of capital and 
labour enjoyed by the kings, must have 
given them peculiar advantages in forming 
a demesne from this source ; and, considering 
how they were restricted in other respects, 
we cannot suppose they were backward in 
availing themselves of this advantage. It 
appears that the lands belonging to the 
crown were, for the most part, cultivated by 
bondsmen, and perhaps also by the people of 
conquered countries*. Yet it also seems 
that the royal vineyards, &c, were in some 
instances rented out to tenants, by whom 
they were cultivated, and who rendered to 
the proprietor, as for rent, a certain propor- 
tion of the produce, or its estimated value in 
money f. 

Seeing that all these offices existed in the 
time of David, and they comprehend nearly 
all those that are mentioned in the time of 
Solomon, much, if not all, of the credit of 
that organization of the kingdom which 
these offices imply, may be ascribed rather 
to the father than the son, although it may 
be more convenient to view the whole in the 
completed form which the kingly administra- 
tion took in the reign of the latter. There 
are, however, a few new offices which are 
mentioned in the reign of Solomon. One is 
that of Governor op the Palace, whose 
office appears to be similar to that of the 
stewards employed by rich men to superin- 
tend their affairs. He had charge of the 
servants, and indeed of everything that 
pertained to the palace J. From the passage 
in Isa. xxii. 22, which contains a promise of 
investiture in this office, it has with reason 
been inferred that this functionary wore a 
peculiar and distinctive dress, bound with a 
precious girdle, and that he carried on his 
shoulder a richly-ornamented key. With 
reference to this last inference, which is 
deduced from — " the key of the house of 
David will I lay upon his shoulder," it 
should perhaps only be considered to suggest 
that a key was the ensign of his office. 

Another body of officers was introduced 
into the state by Solomon, which we may 

* 2 Chron. xxvi. 10. f Sol. Song viii. 11. 

:p 1 Kings iv. 6, xviii. 3; 2 Kings xviii. 18 j 2 Chron. 
xxviii. 7; Isa. xxii. 15, xxxvi. 3, xxxvii. 2, et seq. 



CHAP. III.] 



S0L05I0N. 



311 



readily believe to have been far from popular 
in the nation. They were twelve in number, 
with a president, who was Azariah, a son of 
the prophet Nathan. These twelve were 
appointed to preside over the collections of 
provisions in as many districts, into which 
the land of Israel was divided. Every one 
was charged with the duty of collecting in 
his district, within the year, provisions 
enough to support the court for one month, 
following each other in rotation. It appears 
likely that the produce thus collected formed 
the kingly tenth, the exaction of which had 
been foretold by Samuel, and of which the 
present seems the first intimation. The 
comparative simplicity of the court of Saul, 
and the great spoil obtained by David in his 
wars, without any corresponding expendi- 
ture, had probably rendered this imposition 
previously unnecessary. We have already 
explained why this imposition must have 
been felt in a peculiar degree onerous to the 
Hebrew people, on the ground that they 
already paid the sovereign tithe to the true 
king of the Hebrew nation, Jehovah. And 
although they had been forewarned that this 
additional charge upon them would follow 
as a necessary consequence of their un- 
authorized choice of a human king, we may 
be sure that the first to impose it would 
greatly compromise his popularity with the 
people. That Solomon actually did so — that 
he imposed upon the people unaccustomed 
burdens, which they felt to be very grievous 
— are facts which we know, and seem to 
point to him as the one who first demanded 
the obnoxious tenth, which, as we have 
intimated, was probably paid in the form of 
the produce which these twelve officers were 
appointed to collect. The " store cities," 
and granaries which Solomon is said to have 
erected in different parts of the country, 
were doubtless the places in each district to 
which the produce of that district was 
brought, and in which it was deposited until 
required for the use of the court. Supplying 
the court with provisions merely, might 

I seem to the English reader no very heavy 
task to a nation. But a different notion will 
be formed by reference to the large numbers 

I of persons who are fed from what may be 



considered as the provision supplied to an 
eastern court. Yast numbers of persons, 
who acted in some capacity or other as the 
servants of the numerous officers of the king ; 
the officers and servants of the great person- 
ages who were constantly visiting the court 
of Solomon, and the numerous servants of 
those officers and royal servants ; the harem, 
which alone contained a thousand women, 
with a great number of servants and eunuchs; 
and probably the rations of the royal guards 
and of all dependent upon them : — all were 
to be supplied from the court, being con- 
sidered as members or guests of the royal 
household. This explains the prodigious quan- 
tities of victuals which were daily required 
for the use of the court, of which the account 
is — "Solomon's provision for one day was 
thirty cores (750 bushels) of fine flour, and 
threescore cores (1500 bushels) of meal; ten 
fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pas- 
tures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, 
and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted 
fowl."* 

As a matter of form and arrangement for 
a specific purpose, there was much to admire 
in the orderly supply of provisions to the 
court ; and it was probably not less this than 
the vast quantities brought in and consumed, 
together with the manner in which it was 
prepared and distributed, which engaged 
the admiring notice of the Queen of Sheba, 
although the arrangements connected with 
the dignified attendance and the splendid 
display at Solomon's own table is mentioned 
as the chief matter of her wonder. 

We doubt that the charge of supplying 
the extravagant consumption of the court 
was the only burden which Solomon ven- 
tured to impose on the Israelites. There are 
indications that there was also a tax in 
money ; but whether to complete the kingly 
tenth, or as additional thereto, it may not be 
easy to determine. The reason for this con- 
clusion is chiefly that this provision for the 
court is not called a "tribute" or "tax," 
and was managed by distinct officers under 
a distinct chief from any other. And yet it 
appears that a tribute was collected from 
the people by the separate officer w r ho was 

* 1 Kings iv. 22, 23. 



312 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



" over the tribute." One of the first trans- 
actions of the succeeding reign put this 
beyond a doubt. 

And besides this, it would seem that the 
people had the charge of supporting the 
numerous horses kept by Solomon. Unmind- 
ful of the law by which the kings were 
expressly forbidden " to multiply horses unto 
themselves," Solomon formed a numerous 
body of cavalry. He had 1400 chariots, 
which, being Egyptian chariots, doubtless 
had two horses to each ; and not fewer than 
12,000 horsemen. A portion of these he 
kept in Jerusalem, and the rest were distri- 
buted through the land in what were called 
from this circumstance, the " chariot-cities." 
This distribution was doubtless made for the 
purpose of equally distributing the charge 
of their subsistence. 

With respect to the chariots, these being 
Egyptian, we are at no loss respecting their 
appearance and furniture. But it is remark- 
able that, although it is unquestionable that 
there was a mounted cavalry in Egypt, and 




[Egyptian on Horseback ] 



that Solomon's "horsemen" were mounted 
on trained Egyptian horses, there is but 
one representation of a man on horseback 
in the whole range of the sculptured and 
painted antiquities of that country. From 
its extreme curiousness, a copy of this is 
now introduced. Doubtless, the horsemen, 
distributed in separate bodies throughout 
the country, took their rotations of service 
at Jerusalem, where it appears to have been 



their immediate duty to act as a sort of life- 
guard to the king in excursions and journeys. 
J osephus reckons up the horses of Solomon 
as 20,000, and says that they were the most 
beautiful in their appearance and the most 
remarkable for their swiftness that could 
anywhere be seen; and that, to preserve 
these qualities, they were kept in constant 
and careful exercise. The riders were in 
their appearance quite worthy of their 
horses. They were young men in the beauty 
and flower of their age, and the tallest in 
stature that could be found in the country. 
Their undress was of Tyrian purple ; and 
their long hair, which hung in loose tresses, 
glittered with golden dust with which, every- 
day, they sprinkled their heads. But when 
they attended the king they were in com- 
plete armour, and had their bows ready 
strung. Often, in the fine season, the king 
rode down to his beautiful gardens at 
Etham, six miles from Jerusalem, attended 
by these young men. On such occasions he 
rode loftily in his chariot, arrayed in white 
robes*. 

But we have a still better description of 
the manner of the king's excursions, from 
the pen of Solomon himself, in his renowned 
Song of Songs. His bride is represented 
sitting in her kiosk, and looking towards the 
quarter in which the royal gardens lay ; and 
takes notice of an appearance concerning 
which she inquires of her virgins : — 

" Bride. — What is this that cometh from 

the wilderness, 
Like clouds of smoke perfumed with myrrh, 
With incense, and all the powders of the 

merchant? 
Virgins. — Behold, this is the palanquin 

of Solomon. 
Three-score valiant men are about it, 
Of the valiant of Israel. 
They all bear swords, being expert in war; 
Each bears his sword on his thigh, 
On account of the perils of the night. 
King Solomon hath made for himself 
This couch of the wood of Lebanon. 
Its pillars hath he made of silver, 
Its bases of gold, its cushions of purple. 

* Antiq. viii. 7- 3. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



313 



The middle of it is spread with love* 

By the daughters of Jerusalem." + 

Thi3 is a very clear description of a 
splendid palanquin or litter, and shows that 
this conveyance was then in use among 
great people, as it was in Egypt, and is still, 
in one form or another, throughout the East. 



The form of the palanquin usually employed 
in ancient Egypt is shown in the annexed 
engraving; and, seeing how the luxuries 
and refinements of Egypt were now adopted 
in Palestine, with the evidence before us 
that the palanquin had come into use, this 
was doubtless one of the forms in which it 




was used. But Harmer, in his illustrations 
of Solomon's Song, thinks that the descrip- 
tion would suggest a comparison to the 
howdak, in which, on the back of an elephant, 
the princes of India are wont to ride in 
state. Nevertheless, seeing that elephants 
were not in use in Western Asia for this 
purpose, and that it is only barely possible 
that Solomon should have had any of these 
noble creatures — we should rather suppose 
that he availed himself of the similar and 
much easier conveyance used still in those 
parts of Asia which do not possess the 
elephant. This is a litter, shaped something 
like the howdah, but generally longer, to 
afford the rider the advantage of reclining 
at his ease. It is generally closed except 
the front, or partly open on one or both sides 
but often it has only curtains, more or less 
rich, which may be drawn as the rider 
wishes. This is not carried on the back of 
any animal, but is borne, after the manner 
of a sedan-chair or an ordinary palanquin, 
between two camels or mules, and, from its 
stately and often splendid appearance, has 
the Persia ; name of takht ravan, or " moving- 
throne." 

In this attempt to convey some notion of 

* That k, spread with cushions wrought in the most 
elegant manner, and ornamented with flowers, 
t Sol. Song iii. 6—11. 



the royal establishments, the wealth, the 
state, and the pomp of Solomon's court, 
which, on an inferior scale, formed the model 
to subsequent Hebrew kings, it is necessary 
that some notice of his harem should be 
taken. 

The women of the king's harem are to be 
considered as making a part of his retinue 
or equipage, since, generally speaking, they 
were merely designed to augment the pomp 
which belonged to his character and his 
situation. The multiplication of women in 
the character of wives and concubines was, 
indeed, forbidden in the strongest manner 
by the law of Moses J; but Solomon, and, 
though in a less extent, several other Hebrew 
kings, paid little heed to this admonition, 
and too readily and wickedly exposed them- 
selves to the dangers which Moses had 
anticipated as the result of pursuing the 
course which he had interdicted. 

The kings willingly submitted to any 
expense which might be deemed necessary 
in ornamenting the persons of their women, 
and of the eunuchs (the black ones especially) 
who guarded them. It may be remarked 
here that eunuchs were brought at a great 
expense from foreign countries, inasmuch as 
the mutilation of men was contrary to the 

% Deut. xvii. 17. 



314 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK 17. 



Mosaic law*. The women of the harem 
were considered as concubines (or secondary 
wives) to the king. But the successor to 
the throne, although he came into possession 
of the harem, was not at liberty to have any 
intercourse with the members of it. 

Although the king had unlimited power 
over the harem, yet the wife who was chiefly 
in favour, and, as we have already seen, 
more especially the king's own mother, had 
great authority and weight in political 
matters. Hence in the books of Kings and 
Chronicles the mother of the king is every- 
where spoken of as one of the royal counsel- 
lors t. 

The women in the harem of Solomon were 
not fewer than one thousand, of whom the 
Scripture counts seven hundred as wives and 
three hundred as concubines. This distinc- 
tion may be taken as illustrated by Solomon's 
own classification at a time when he was 
younger, and his harem was less extensive, 
than in the later day to which the present 
statement refers : — " In my palace are three- 
score queens, and fourscore concubines, and 
virgins without number." J Here by queens 
we are probably to understand those of noble 
parentage, who at the celebration of their 
nuptials brought ample dowries with them; 
by concubines those who were selected on 
account of their personal charms, and were 
married without dowries ; and by virgins 
those who were also procured (perhaps pur- 
chased) by the royal purveyors on account 
of their beauty, and who were in waiting to 
be introduced to the royal notice. With the 
number of these Solomon himself does not 
appear to have been acquainted. The same 
distribution doubtless applies to the larger 
number which now engages our notice. 

That a large proportion of the whole were 
foreigners and idolaters, is certain. The 
chief and favoured wife was undoubtedly 
the king of Egypt's daughter. She is so 
spoken of both in the Scripture and by 
Josephus. This lady is generally believed 

* For proof of the employment of eunuchs in the harems 
of the Hebrew kings, see 1 Kings xxii. .0; 2 Kings, viii. 6, 
ix. 32, 33, xx. 18, xxiii. 11; Jer. xxxviii. 7, xxxix. 16, 
xli. 16. 

f See Jahn, sect. 236. £ Sol. Song vl 8. 



to be the bride in the Canticles. Of this 
there appears to us to be very little doubt. 
But were it otherwise, this bride was un- 
questionably a principal and distinguished 
wife ; and from this source some information 
may be collected respecting the manners and 
state of the harem, and the position, privi- 
leges, and attendance of the favoured wife. 

That among the first class of wives there 
was one distinguished above the others, and 
who was called, pre-eminently, the Queen, is 
evinced not only by this, but by other pas- 
sages of Scripture. But the ground of this 
distinction is not clearly intimated ; and, 
instead of inquiring the particular ground 
of this distinction, it is better to understand 
that the ground was various and fluctuating. 
Our apprehension is, that the first wife 
married with a dowry was the one who, as a 
mere matter of right, was considered entitled 
to this honour, unless she were superseded 
in it by another dowried wife giving birth to 
an heir to the crown ; or unless the king 
subsequently obtained a wife so exalted in 
birth, that her father was entitled to expect 
and demand the first place for his daughter. 
Here are three grounds of preference, of 
which the mere personal liking of the 
monarch is not one. For the whole history 
and romance of the East attests that the 
chief wife could maintain her position, even 
when some other woman was more the object 
of the sovereign attention and regard; and 
that in fact the great current jealousy of the 
harem is that between the "sultaness" and 
the " favourite." But, indeed, neither in the 
Bible nor elsewhere does the king ever 
appear to think of the possibility of deposing 
the one who has become the chief wife, to 
promote the favourite to her place, though 
he might raise her to that highest station if 
a vacancy occurred. The queen could only 
be deposed for some strong crime or ofFence. 
Thus Rehoboam, Solomon's son and suc- 
cessor, made Maachah queen on declaring 
her son heir to the throne ; but she was 
afterwards deposed (by her grandson) on 
account of her idolatries §: and in Persia 
queen Yashti was deposed, by the advice of 
the royal council, on account of her dis- 

§ 2 Chron. xi. 21, 22, xv. 16. 



CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



315 



obedience. We never read of a queen being 
deposed merely because the king liked 
another better. 

•It appears, throughout the Canticles, that j 
this principal wife was attended, with much 
respect, by a considerable number of maidens ; 
and as the attendance on the other wives of 
the first class was doubtless in proportion, j 
although not equal, it may be that the 
number of females in the harem greatly 
exceeded the " thousand wives and con- 
cubines." In fact, these attendants formed, 
most probably, the "virgins without number," \ 
in even the early state of Solomon's harem ; I 
for it is usual for the inferior members of I 
an oriental harem to wait upon each other* 
and upon the superior ladies. 

The dress of the queen (for by that high 
title we had better, to avoid circumlocution, 
call the principal wife) was very splendid ; 
but it does not clearly appear whether its 
splendour was distinctive, or was such in its 
fashion as any one of wealth and high rank 
might exhibit. The raiment was of cloth of 
gold and costly needlework f, and particular 
attention was paid to her head-tire. In the 
Canticles the king exclaims, — 
" Beautiful are thy brows -with rows of jewels, 

And thy neck with strings of pearls ! 

Yet rows of gold we will make for thee, 

Together with studs of silver." — 

Sol Song L 10, 11. 
The first line intimates that the ornament 
of rows of jewels on the head, still much 
affected by ladies in the East, was thus 
early in use, while the two last lines exhibit 
an intention to provide for her a head- 
ornament which, although of humbler ma- 
terials (gold and silver, but perhaps" set with 
jewels), was more honourably distinctive in 
its character. This was doubtless her crown; 
for that the principal wife was distinguished 
by a crown in the Hebrew court, as she was 
in that of Persia J, we learn from the prophet 
Jeremiah §. 

* In a certain number of them the duty of attendance is 
taken by each in rotation, 
t Psalm xlv. 9, 13, 14. 
% Est. ii. 17. 

§ " Say unto the king and to the queen, Humble your- 
selves, sit ye down : for he will cause to fall from your 
head the diadem of your glory." Jer. xiii. 18. Blayney's 
version. 



The other intimations concerning the 
queen's condition which may be collected 
from the Canticles are slight, but instructive 
to those who can detect the inner character 
of things and circumstances through, and 
by means of, the forms in which they are 
presented to the view. 

The only passage of Scripture in which a 
woman is mentioned as eating in company 
with a man, is that in which the queen is 
represented as present at a garden banquet, 
with the king and a few of his intimates. 
This, however, was not a regular meal or 
public feast, but a sort of refection, as 
appears from the articles named. The king 
says, — 

" I am come into my garden, my spouse ; 
I gather my myrrh with my spice; 
I eat my honeycomb with my honey; 
I drink my wine with my milk. 

Eat, my friends, drink ! 
Yea, drink abundantly, my beloved ! " — 

Sol. Song v. 1. 

From the frequent mention of valuable 
perfumes, it may appear that the queen was 
distinguished by the cost of those which 
were profusely lavished on her person ; and 
that, at least within the harem, she was 
served and attended with considerable state, 
very constantly appears. "We shall be ex- 
cused for mentioning one small circumstance, 
on account of the illustration it enables us 
to offer of the antiquity of a luxury, or 
rather comfort, which, iu our northern 
climates, is of very modern use. This is 
the umbrella. Its very ancient use in Egypt 
is shown by the cut at p. 316, in which an 
attendant bears an umbrella of peculiar form 
behind the palanquin of his lord. There it 
had become a private convenience, whereas 
in other oriental countries it appears to have 
been, as it still is, an appurtenance of the 
kingly state. In the sculptures of Persia it 
is found as being borne by an attendant 
over the head of the king, and is of a shape 
not remarkably different from that which it 
now bears. Harmer|| ingeniously conjectures 
that the passage in the Psalms (cxxi. 5) — 
" The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy 

li " Observations," vol. ii. p. 441. 



316 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[book IV. 




[Umbrella.— From Persepolis.] 



shade on thy right hand : the sun shall not 
smite thee by day, nor the rnoon by night," 
— alludes to and indicates the ancient use of 
the umbrella in Palestine. It appears to us 
that, by an easy transition of ideas, there is 
a similar allusion in the Song of Songs, 
where the queen says, — " His banner over 
me was love."* At all events, this instru- 
ment being probably in use in Palestine, it 
will, from the customs of the East, as illus- 
trated in the annexed engraving, appear 
that the umbrella, or a canopied adaptation 
of it, borne over her head, was one of the 
distinctions to which the queen, especially a 
daughter of the king of Egypt, might aspire. 

We have dwelt on these small matters in 
this place, because no equally fitting oppor- 
tunity for introducing them will hereafter 
occur, while they include too much illustra- 
tion of the state of society, and of manners 
and ideas in a remote age and country, to 
be altogether overlooked. With respect to 
the harem in particular, we are glad to have 
said all we need say on a subject so humbling 
and so painful : for it is both, to contemplate 
a system under which a vast multitude of 
reasoning and feeling beings, who might be 
the blessed wives and mothers of a thousand 
homes, are brought together, as mere objects 

* Sol. Song ii. 4. 



of state or appetite, and their lives utterly 
wasted to gratify the lust or ostentation of a 
single man. In the case of Solomon, the 
system brought its fatal retribution, which 
will presently be noticed as a matter of 
history. But there was another retribution, 
resulting from the natural reaction of this 
system, which has less been noticed ; and 
this was the debasement of his own moral 
sense, as exemplified in the loss of the power 
of appreciating the many true and beautiful 
things which are found in the character of 
woman. The man is very greatly to be 
pitied who could say — " Behold, this have I 

found, counting one by one to find out 

the reason ; which yet my soul seeketh, but 
I find not : one [wise or good] man among a 
thousand I have found, but a woman among 
all those have I not found"* The definite 
number, corresponding with that of his 
wives and concubines, sufficiently intimates j 
that they afforded him the experience from j 
which he speaks, and from which he is 
evidently disposed to infer the general 
character of the sex. But a man much less 
wise than Solomon may discover "the reason" 
which eluded his research. He had placed 
both them and himself in a false position : — 
them, by bringing them into a condition, and 
under the operation of a system, which 
might seem as if ingeniously contrived for 
the very purpose of precluding the develop- 
ment and exercise of the peculiar energies 
and virtues for which woman, in her true 
place, is distinguished ; and himself, by ren- 
dering it impossible that he should ever 
witness those true feelings and small no- 
bilities of character, which, even in this 
position, she might manifest among her own 
companions, although they expand only to 
perfection and bear good fruit under the 
genial warmth of domestic life. 

King Solomon was unquestionably wise: 
but, from this and other matters, we may 
suspect the practical character of his wisdom 
— may doubt whether it were not rather 
" the wisdom of words," or of ideas, or even 
of knowledge, than that wisdom of conduct, 
or, more properly, wisdom manifested in 
conduct, which is worth more than all. 

\ Eccles. vii. 27, 2S. 



chap. ra.J 



SOLOMON. 



317 



But — aware of the imputations to which his 
conduct had laid him open, and how little 
he might seem to thoughtful men to have 
honoured the precious gifts which God had 
given to him — he has been careful to leave 
his own apology on record*. In this he 
exhibits himself as testing all the "vanities" 
of life to realise the practical conviction of 
their emptiness, and to rest the more as- 
suredly in the conclusion that wisdom is the 
only real good for man under the sun. He 
alleges that all this while his wisdom re- 
mained with him ; by which he must mean 
his general intellectual wisdom, particularly 
as enabling him to detect the unsatisfying 
nature of all the vanities of life. But 
whether it were the part of a wise man to 
consume his energies and time in such ex- 
periments on life ; and whether the resulting 
conviction to himself could counterbalance 
the grievous and irremediable wrong which 
these experiments inflicted on others, — are 
questions which do not engage his notice. 

The view which we take, — that the pro- 
verbial wisdom of Solomon had nothing to 
do with his moral character or perceptions ; 
and that, although he possessed the most 
wisdom, he was not in his use of it the 
wisest of men, appears to be precisely that 
which the Scriptural narrative intended to 
convey. Nor is the world without other 
eminent instances in which vast attainments, 
and a strength and grasp of intellect before 
which the most hidden things of physical 
and moral nature lay open and bare, have 
been united with much weakness of heart 
and great deficiency in the moral sense. 
This view does not therefore in the least 
degree interfere with the conviction that — 
" God gave Solomon wisdom and under- 
standing exceeding much, and largeness of 
heart t, even as the sand that is on the sea- 
shore For he was wiser than all men ; 

than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and 
Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and 
his fame was in all nations round about. 

* In the book of Ecclesiastes; the only book in the 
canonical Scriptures which lays claim to a philosophical 
character. 

\ We should say head or intellect. The Hebrews made 
the heart the seat of intellect, and the bowels the seat of 
feeling. 



Andx he spake three thousand proverbs: 
and his songs were a thousand and five. 
And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree 
that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that 
springeth out of the wall : he spake also of 
beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, 
and of fishes. And there came of all people 
to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all 
kings of the earth, which had heard of his 
wisdom."} 

Among these, there is one whose visit is 
more particularly mentioned than any other. 
This was the Queen of Sheba. And the 
distinguished notice which her visit has 
obtained is probably on account of the 
greater distance from which she came, and 
the greater glory which therefrom redounded 
to Solomon, the fame of whose wisdom 
brought her, with royal offerings, from her 
far distant land. That land is supposed to 
have been Abyssinia ; and as the fleets of 
Solomon, which passed through the Red 
Sea, may, with the greatest probability, be 
presumed to have touched and traded at the 
eastern ports of Africa, it is easy to see 
through what channels she might have heard 
of the glory and wisdom of the Hebrew king. 
She came with a very great and splendid 
retinue ; and in her train were camels laden 
with spices, gold, and precious stones. In 
her interviews with Solomon she "proved 
him with hard questions," — a mode of testing 
"wisdom" which was common in that age, 
and which, indeed, every one who made 
unusual pretensions to knowledge and sa- 
gacity was understood to invite. Solomon 
was familiar with this exercise, for doubtless 
other illustrious visitors had tried his wisdom 
in the same manner ; and Josephus expressly 
says that before this there had been much 
passing of "hard questions" to and fro 
between him and Hiram king of Tyre. He 
readily solved all the difhculties which the 
royal stranger proposed; and we are told 
that, " When the queen of Sheba had seen 
all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he 
had built, and the meat of his table, and the 
sitting of his servants, and the attendance of 
his ministers, and their apparel, and his cup- 
bearers, and his ascent by which he went up 

i 1 Kings iv. 29—34. 



318 



unto the house of Jehovah, there was no 
more spirit in her, and she said to the king, 
' It was a true report that I heard in mine 
own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. 
Howbeit I believed not the words until I came, 
and mine own eyes had seen it ; and behold, 
the half was not told me : thy wisdom and 
prosperity exceed eth the fame which I 
heard. Happy are thy men! happy are 
these thy servants which stand continually 
before thee, and that hear thy wisdom. 
Blessed be Jehovah thy God, which delighted 
in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel."* 

Being now satisfied, the queen presented 
Solomon with the precious things she had 
brought with her. The gold alone was not 
less than one hundred and twenty talents t, 
and with respect to the spices, it is remarked 
that " there came no more such abundance 
of spices as those which the queen of Sheba 
gave to king Solomon." Suitable returns 
were made by him ; and the queen returned 
to her own country. The native annals of 
Abyssinia not only claim this princess for 
their queen, but ascribe to this visit the very 
important consequence of the introduction 
of Judaism into that country. And it is 
certainly worthy of notice that to inquire 
into the Jewish religion, no less than to 
witness the wisdom and greatness of Solomon, 
seems to be stated as the object of her 
journey, for it is said that it was in con- 
sequence of her having " heard of the fame 
of Solomon, concerning the name of Jehovah," 
that this journey was undertaken. 

The glory of Solomon's reign was grievously 
dimmed towards its conclusion. It will be 
observed that he had not only transgressed 
the law by "multiplying wives unto himself," 
but had taken a considerable proportion of 
them from the neighbouring idolatrous and 
adverse nations, with whom the Israelites 
generally had been interdicted from con- 
tracting any alliance, on the ground that 
such connections might turn their hearts to 
idols. The case of Solomon evinced in the 
strongest manner the wisdom and foresight 
of this interdiction ; for even he, in the 
doating attachment of his latter days to the 
"fair idolatresses" in his harem, not only 

* 1 Kings x. 4—9. f- Worth 720,000?. 



[BOOK IT. 

tolerated the public exercise of their idola- 
trous worship, but himself erected high 
places for the worship of Ashtaroth, the 
goddess of the Sidonians ; of Chemosh, the 
god of the Moabites; and of Molech, the 
abominable idol of the Ammonites, on the 
hills opposite to and overlooking that splendid 
temple which he had commenced his reign 
by building to Jehovah. The contrast of 
these two acts, at the opposite extremities of 
his reign, offers as striking a "vanity" as 
any of those on which he expatiates in his 
book. In the end, his fall was rendered 
complete by his own participation, by the 
act of sacrifice, in the worship of these idols. 
This great and astonishing offence is, with 
sufiicient probability, reckoned by Abulfaragi 
to have taken place about the thirty-fourth 
year of Solomon's reign, and the fifty-fourth 
of his age. By this fall he forfeited the 
benefits and privileges which had been 
promised on the condition of his obedience 
and rectitude. It was not long before the 
doom which he had so weakly and wilfully 
incurred was made known to him. This was 
that the kingdom should be rent from him 
and given to his servant. Nevertheless, in 
judgment remembering mercy, the Lord said ! i 
that this great evil should not occur during ! 
his time, but under his son. This was for jl 
David's sake; and, for his sake also, who | 
had derived so much satisfaction from the 
promised perpetuity of his race in the throne, 
his house should still reign over one tribe, 
that of Judah, with which Benjamin had ' 
now coalesced. How this intimation was 
received by Solomon, and what effect it 
produced upon him, we are not told. 

Soon after, the same intimation was con- 
veyed to an able and spirited young Ephraim- 
ite, named Jeroboam. This person had so 
much distinguished himself by his diligence ' 
and ability in an inferior employment as to 1 
attract the notice of the king, who promoted 
him to the high and responsible ofiice of 
intendant of the imposts levied from the two ! 
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. At the ' 
time when his duties in the provinces re- ' 
quired him to leave Jerusalem, a prophet 
named Abijah met him in the way, and, 
seizing the new mantle which he wore, rent 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CliAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



319 



it into twelve pieces, of which he gave to 
him ten. This significant action he then 
proceeded to explain, in correspondence with 
the intimation which had been given to 
Solomon. The new mantle of the kingdom 
was to be rent after the death of the king, 
when only two parts, or tribes, should remain 
to the house of David, and Jehovah would 
give the other ten to Jeroboam, and confirm 
the dominion to his race if it continued in 
obedience. The mind of Jeroboam was well 
suited to grasp the prospect thus opened to 
him. But it appears that he allowed the 
communication to transpire ; for it came to 
the ears of Solomon, who then sought to 
intercept the appointment by putting him 
to death. But he had timely warning and 
fled to Shishak, the king of Egypt, who 
protected him ; and there he remained until 
Solomon died. 

Egypt had long before afforded refuge to 
two persons, who now, in their own countries, 
occasioned much trouble to Solomon, and 
more afterwards to his successor. The first 
of these was Hadad, of the royal family 
of Edom. He was a little boy when 
that country was conquered for David by 
Joab; and some faithful adherents then 
contrived to escape with him to Egypt, 
where Pharaoh gave him a house, appointed 
a regular provision for his household, and 
bestowed lands upon him ; and when he 
grew up bestowed upon him in marriage the 
sister of the queen, by whom he had a son, 
who was brought up among the sons of the 
Egyptian king. But ease and honours could 
not divert Hadad from the remembrance of 
his native land, his lost kingdom, and the 
slaughter of all his house. Burning with 
high purposes of ambition and vengeance, 
and of restoring the independence of Edom, 
he sought, and with considerable difficulty 
obtained, permission of Pharaoh to return to 
his own country. The attempts which he 
then made to recover his kingdom occasioned 
considerable trouble in the latter part of 
Solomon's reign; but the strong garrisons 
which David had left in Edom, and which 
Solomon maintained there, prevented them 
from being successful. When his case ap- 
peared hopeless in this quarter he went, 



with such as he could persuade to follow his 
fortunes, and joined himself to Rezin, who 
had already occasioned considerable dis- 
turbance to Solomon's power in Syria. This 
Rezin had been a commander under Hadad- 
rezer, that king of Zobah whom David over- 
threw. It seems that he had drawn off the 
force under his command, and directed it to 
the pursuit of his own ambitious projects. 
At first he led with his men that wild life 
of predatory warfare, of which there are so 
many examples in the Bible history of 
ancient times ; but he gradually acquired a 
settled povv^er over a portion of Syria, and 
ultimately established a kingdom, of which 
Damascus was the capital ; and this, of 
course, he could not do but at some loss and 
disadvantage to Solomon, especially by in- 
terrupting the communications with Tadmor. 

From this person Hadad and his adherents 
experienced a good reception, and obtained as- 
sistance in establishing themselves in another 
and neighbouring portion of Syria. And 
when Rezin died, Hadad (by what means or 
on what grounds we know not) obtained pos- 
session of his dominions also, thus becoming 
the virtual founder of that important king- 
dom of Damascene-Syria in which, in future 
years, the Hebrew nation often found a per- 
severing and formidable opponent. Hadad 
was for his kingly qualities so much honoured 
by his successors, that his name became a 
very common one among them, if, indeed, 
it were not made an official one, like that of 
Pharaoh in Egypt. The histories of Hadad 
and Rezin, and the parts which they took, 
severally or conjointly, in the foundation of 
the kingdom of Damascene-Syria, is involved 
in much obscurity and doubt, amidst which 
the account which has been now given seems 
the best that can be gathered from the cir- 
cumstances on record. 

Whether Solomon ultimately repented of 
his offences, and was reconciled to God, is a 
question which is involved in some doubt". 
If he did repent, it is a matter of surprise 
that there is not the least intimation of so 
interesting and important a circumstance, 
either in the books of Kings and Chronicles, 
or in Josephus. That also none of the 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



punishments of his crime were averted has 
been used as an argument against his re- 
pentance : but to this we are not disposed to 
allow much weight, for if the repentance of 
David for his acts of adultery and murder 
did not avert the punishments denounced 
against him, how much less might we expect 
it to do so in the case of idolatry — which 
was, in fact, treason against the King Jehovah 
— a public crime committed by a person 
whose example, both from his high station 
and his character for wisdom, was calculated 
to have the most dangerous effect, — wh?le 
that station and character rendered it pre- 
eminently his duty to set the contrary ex- 
ample of fidelity to the Great King. We 
therefore conclude that, whatever benefit 
repentance might have brought to his own 
soul, we are not to suppose that it would 
have averted the public punishment of a 
public crime. If a man commits a murder 
and repents, his repentance creates the hope 
of future benefit to his own soul: but, in this 
world, his punishment from the law is the 
same as if he had not repented. 

Nevertheless, it has been charitably con- 
cluded that Solomon did repent; and this 
conclusion is founded on the book of Eccle- 
siastes, which is supposed to have been 
written after that repentance. Yet whoever 
looks at that book dispassionately will see 
little to support that conclusion. There ap- 
pears to us nothing in those views of life and 
of the dispensations of Providence which it 
contains, which might not have occurred to 
his sagacious mind before as well as after his 
offence. All the experience to which he 
therein refers, we know to have been obtain- 
able by him before his fall ; while it is equally 
true that the book itself contains not the 
slightest allusion to his offence, or even to 
idolatry in general, although that "vanity 
of vanities" is the one to which he must 
have been the most acutely sensible, had he 
been in the supposed state of repentance 
when that book was written. The result is, 
that this appears to be a question on which 
we have no evidence on either side, and on 
which it is therefore best not to form any 
opinion. 

Solomon died in the year 990 B.C., after he 



had reigned forty years and lived about 
sixty. With all his glory he was but little 
lamented by his subjects, for reasons which 
will now be obvious to the reader. Indeed, 
a great part of the nation may appear to 
have regarded his death with a secret satis- 
faction, on account of the prospect which it 
offered of a release from the heavy imposts 
which the king had fonnd it necessary to 
inflict for the support of his costly establish- 
ments. The more the splendour of Solomon's 
reign is considered, the more its illusive and 
insubstantial character will appear, whether 
we inquire for its effect upon the real welfare 
of the nation, or even upon the permanent 
grandeur of the crown. Its utter dispropor- 
tion to the permanent means and resources 
of the state is strikingly and sufficiently 
evinced by the fact that, so far from any of 
his successors supporting or restoring the 
magnificence of his court, the quantities of 
gold which he had lavished upon his various 
works and utensils gradually disappeared, to 
the last fragment, and served but as a trea- 
sure on which succeeding kings drew until it 
was entirely exhausted. 

Of the children of Solomon history has 
only preserved the name of one son, Reho- 
boam, his destined successor, and one daugh- 
ter named Taphath*. Rehoboam was the 
son of an Ammonitish mother, and being 
born the year before his father's accession to 
the throne, was of course upwards of forty 
years of age when that father died. 

The effects of the arbitrary policy and in- 
ordinate expense which had prevailed in the 
court of Solomon during the last years of 
his reign, began to appear as soon as his 
death was announced. The rulers of the 
tribes assembled at the city of Shechem, in 
the tribe of Ephraim, — which tribe, it will | 
be remembered, was always disposed to re- j 
gard with strong jealousy the superiority of 
Judah. Here they wished to enter into a 
new stipulation with the heir to the throne i 
— a precaution which had been neglected 1 
under the excitement and extraordinary cir- 
cumstances which attended the accession of 
Solomon. If Rehoboam had been wise, the 

* 1 Kings iv. 11. 



T 

I CHAP. III.] 



SOLOMON. 



321 



place which had been chosen for this con- 
gress, and the presence of Jeroboam, — who 
had hastened from Egypt when he heard of 
Solomon's death, and took a prominent part 
in the present matter, — were circumstances 
which, among others, might have apprised 
him chat the occasion was one of no ordinary 
| moment, and required the most careful and 
! skilful management. Rehoboam was not 
| equal to this crisis; for when the rulers de- 
j manded, as the condition of their submis- 
j sion, that he should abrogate a portion of the 
burdens which his father had imposed upon 
them, he failed lO discern what might be 
gained by a ready and cheerful concession, 
and required three days on which to deli- 
berate on their demand. In this time he 
decided to reject the counsel of the older 
and more prudent counsellors, who enforced 
the necessity of compliance with this de- 
mand, and chose rather to adopt the advice 
of the young and headstrong courtiers — 
warm advocates of the royal prerogative — 
vfbo exhorted him to overawe the remon- 
strants by his majesty, and to drive them 
back like yelping dogs to their kennels. Ac- 
cordingly, when the three days had expired, 
his fatal and foolish answer was, that his 
i little finger should be heavier upon the na- 
I tion than his father's loins ; and that whereas 
j his father had only chastised them with 
whips, he would chastise them with scor- 
pions. Nothing could more clearly than this 
answer evince the unfitness of Rehoboam 
for the crisis which had now occurred, and 
his utter ignorance of the spirit which was 
in Israel ■ while it at the same time indicates 
the arbitrary notions of the royal prero- 
gative which he found occasion to imbibe 
during the later years of his father's reign. 

On receiving this answer ten of the tribes 
instantly renounced their allegiance to the 
house of David, and chose Jeroboam for their 
king. Two of the tribes, Judah and Ben- 
jamin, alone adhered to Rehoboam — Judah 
had the good reason that the family of David 
was of their tribe; and both these tribes 
were advantaged by the presence of the me- 
tropolis on their respective borders, and had 



necessarily derived peculiar benefits from 
that profuse expenditure of the late king of 
which the other tribes had cause to com- 
plain. 

Thus was the great and powerful empire 
which David had erected, and which Solomon 
had ruled, already divided into two very un- 
equal parts. Jeroboam had ten of the tribes, 
and his dominion extended over the tributary 
nations eastward, towards the Euphrates; 
while Rehoboam only retained the tribes of 
Judah and Benjamin, which are henceforth, 
from their strict identity of interest, to be 
regarded as one tribe, under the name 
of Judah. To this division belonged also 
the subject territories of Philistia and Edom. 
But, notwithstanding the more than equal 
figure which this kingdom makes in the 
further history of the Hebrew nation, it may 
be well to bear in mind that what is hence- 
forth to be called the kingdom of Judah, 
ruled by the house of David, formed not 
above a fourth part of the dominions of 
Solomon. 

Rehoboam was not disposed to submit 
quietly to this proceeding. At first, affecting 
to suppose that his authority over the ten 
tribes would still be recognised, he sent, at 
the usual season, the officer who was " over 
the tribute" to collect the taxes which had 
been exacted in the last years of his father's 
reign. But the people rose, and testified 
their indignation and defiance by stoning 
this obnoxious personage to death. On this 
Rehoboam resolved to attempt to reduce the 
revolted tribes to his obedience by force of 
arms, and collected a large army for that 
purpose. But when the prophet Shemaiah 
announced to him the Lord's command to 
relinquish this enterprise, he manifested 
some sense of his true position by disband- 
ing his army. This it must be allowed was 
a signal example of submission, and may in- 
timate that when thus reminded of it he be- 
came sensible of the propriety of the requi- 
sition. JSTo definite treaty of peace was, 
however, concluded, and the frontiers of the 
two kingdoms continued to present an hostile 
aspect. 



f 322 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. J 



CHAPTER IV. 
ISRAEL, from 990 b.c. to 931 B.C. 



The period which occupies the remaining 
chapters of the present book " has been 
hitherto considered as the Gordian knot of 
Sacred Chronology; the intricacy of which 
all the chronologers have complained of, but 
none have been able to unravel. The diffi- 
culty of harmonizing the reigns of the kings 
of Judah and Israel together has principally 
arisen; 1, from the discordance in some of 
the correspondences in the years of their 



respective reigns, with the direct lengths of 
those reigns ; and, 2, from not critically de- 
termining the duration of the two inter- | 
regnums, or vacancies, in the succession of j 
the latter kings, so as to make them corre- j 
spond with the former throughout."* 

All this has been adjusted and harmonized j 
by Dr, Hales in the following Table, on data 
which he has fully explained in his ' Ana- j 
lysis :' — 



Kings of Judah. 



10 
11 
12 
13 
14 
15 
16 
17 
18 
19 
20 



Names. 



Rehoboam 

Abijah 

Asa 

Jehoshaphat .... 
Jehoram or Joram . . 

Ahaziah 

Queen Athaliah . . . 
Joash or Jehoash . . . 

Amaziah 

Interregnum .... 
Uzziah or Azariah . . 

Jotham 

Ahaz 

Hezekiah 

Manasseh 

Amon 

Josiah 

Jehoahaz, three months 

Jehoiakim 

Jehoiackin, three months 
Zedekiah 

Jerusalem taken . . . 



Years. 



Kings of Israel. 



17 


990 


1 


3 


973 


2 


41 


970 


3 


25 


929 


4 


8 


904 


5 


1 


896 


6 


6 


895 


7 


40 


889 


8 


29 


849 


9 


11 


820 


10 


52 


809 


11 


16 


757 


12 


16 


741 




29 


725 


13 


55 


696 


14 


2 


641 


15 


31 


639 


16 


11 


608 


17 


11 


597 




404 


586 





Names. 



Jeroboam 

Nadab 

Baasha (24) 

Elah (2) 

Zimri and Omri . . (12) 

Ahab 

Ahaziah . 

Jehoram or Joram . . . 

Jehu 

Jehoahaz 

Jehoash or Joash .... 

Jeroboam II 

First Interregnum . . . 
Zeehariah and Shallum . 

Menahem 

Pekahiah 

Pekah 

Second Interregnum . . 
Hoshea 

Samaria taken .... 



22 

2 
23 

1 
11 
22 

2 
12 
28 
17 
16 
41 
22 

1 
10 

2 
20 
10 



271 



990 
968 
966 
943 
942 
931 
909 
907 
895 
867 
850 
834 
793 
771 
770 
760 
758 
738 
728 

719 



In the preceding history we have seen 
that Jehovah, from the time of Moses to the 
death of Solomon, always governed the He- 
brews according to the promises and threat- 
enings which he delivered from Mount 
Horeb. If they deviated from the principle 
of worshipping Jehovah as the only true 
God, that is, if they revolted from their law- 



ful king, he brought them, by suitable chas- 
tisements, to reflect on their obligations, to 
return to Jehovah, and again to keep sacred 
the fundamental law of their church and 
state. The same course we shall find pur- 
sued in the government of the two king- I 
doms. If the monarchs of both had viewed j 

* Hales, vol. ii. p. 372. 



! CHAP. IV.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 990 B.C. TO 931 B.C. 



the late great revolution, the sundering of 
the empire, as a consequence of the idola- 
trous and unlawful practices of Solomon's 
court, as a warning (for such it really was) 
to them not to break the fundamental law of 
the state, but to govern their subjects ac- 
cording to the law, and to treat them as the 
1 subjects of Jehovah; then both kingdoms 
| might have enjoyed uninterrupted pro- 
i sperity. Even Jeroboam, though he had 
received no promise of an eternal kingdom, 
as David had, yet the assurance was given 
him that, if he obeyed the law as David did, 
the throne should long continue in his 
family*. But as the kings of both kingdoms 
often disregarded the fundamental laws of 
the commonwealth — by idolatry rebelled 
against their divine sovereign, carried their 
disorders so far, and treated their subjects in 
such a manner, that they are aptly described 
by Isaiah and Ezekielt under the image of 
wicked shepherds — there arose a succession 
of prophets, who, by impressive declarations 
and symbolic actions, reminded both rulers 
and subjects of their duties to Jehovah, and 
threatened them with punishment in case of 
disobedience. 

Even the rebellious backslidings from God 
which more particularly distinguished the 
kingdom of Israel did not prevent Jehovah 
from governing the kingdom according to 
his law. We shall see in the sequel how he 
exterminated one after another those royal 
families who not only retained the arbitrary 
institutions of Jeroboam, and tolerated and 
patronised idolatry with its concomitant 
vices, but even introduced and protected it 
by their royal authority. The extermination 
of the reigning family he announced before- 
I hand by a prophet, and appointed his suc- 
cessor. We shall see that the higher their 
! corruptions rose, so much the more decisive 
and striking were the declarations and signs 
made to show the Israelites that the Lord of 
the universe was their Lord and King, and 
that all idols were as nothing when opposed 
to him. Even Naaman, the Syrian, acknow- 
ledged, and the Syrians generally found to 

* 1 Kings xi. 37, 38, xii. 21—24; 2 Chron. xi. 1-4, 
xii. 15. 
f Isa. lvi. 9; Ezek. xxxiv. 
i 



their sorrow, that the God of the Hebrews 
was not a mere national god, but that his 
power extended over all nations. The his- 
tory represents a contest between Jehovah, 
who ought to be acknowledged as God, and s 
the idolatrous Israelites ; and everything is j 
ordered to preserve the authority of Jehovah 
in their minds. At last, after all milder 
punishments had proved fruitless, these re- 
bellions were followed by the destruction of 
the kingdom, and the captivity of the 
people, which had been predicted by Moses, | 
and afterwards by Ahijah, Hosea, Amos, and ! 
other prophets J. 

We shall also find that the divine Pro- 
vidence was favourable or adverse to the 
kingdom of Judah, according as the people 
obeyed or transgressed the law ; only here 
the royal family remained unchanged, ac- 
cording to the promise given to David. We 
shall here meet indeed with many idolatrous 
and rebellious kings, but they were always 
succeeded by those of purer mind, who put 
a stop to idolatry, re-established theocracy in ! 
the hearts of their subjects, and, by the aid j 
of prophets, priests, and Levites, and the | 
services of the temple, restored the know- 
ledge and worship of God. Judah, there- 
fore, although much smaller than Israel, con- 
tinued her national existence 134 years 
longer ; but at last, as no durable reforma- 
tion was produced, she experienced the same 
fate as her sister kingdom, in fulfilment of 
the predictions of Moses and several other 
prophets. 

The following account of the two king- 
doms, therefore, should be viewed as that of 
a real theocracy ; and thus, as a continued 
execution of the determination of God, that 
the true religion should be preserved on the 
earth. In this view it certainly deserves 
our most attentive study §. 

Shechem, being one of the most important 
towns in his own tribe of Ephraim, was made 
by Jeroboam the metropolis of the new 
kingdom. He had also a summer residence 
at Tirzah, in the tribe of Manasseh, which, 

± Deut. xxviii. 36; 1 Kings xiv. 15; Hosea ix.; Amos v. 
§ The above following the table, is adopted, with somfj 
abridgment, from Jahn, book v. sect. 35. 



Y z 




therefore, seems in the history to share the 
metropolitan dignity with Shechem. 

The new king, little regarding the uncon- 
ditional promises which had been made to 
him, applied himself to such operations of 
human policy as might tend to establish his 
kingdom, and confirm its separation from 
that of Judah. Viewing them as measures 
of policy in the abstract, the praise of much 
political sagacity and foresight need not be 
denied to their author; and it is certain 
that they were successful in promoting the 
object he had in view. But they were, in 
his peculiar position, as a king in Israel — 
that is, a vicegerent of Jehovah, not only 
improper, but in the highest degree criminal ; 
for they involved an interference with mat- 
ters far above the prerogative of Jehovah's 
vassal, and the abrogation of institutions 
which the Supreme King had established as 
essential to the good government and subor- 
dination of His kingdom, with the intro- 
duction of other institutions of a nature ab- 
horrent to the Mosaic law, and of a ten- 
dency against which that law had most 
jealously guarded the people. Jeroboam is 
therefore to be regarded not as, gratuitously 
and from abstract preference of evil, leading 
the people into wrong courses ; but as being 
careless whether the course he took were 
good or evil, so that it tended, in his judg- 
ment, to the security of his kingdom; for he 
had failed to learn that hard truth — that 
implicit obedience to the behests of his 
Almighty superior, not tortuous courses of 
political expediency, offered the true security 
of his peculiar kingdom. 

Jeroboam was much annoyed at the obli- 
gation which the law imposed, of the resort 
of all the Israelites three times a year to 
Jerusalem. He clearly perceived that this 
concourse and frequent meeting of all the 
tribes at the same place, and for the same 
object, was a strong uniting circumstance 
among them; and he feared that the con- 
tinuance of this usage might ultimately 
tend to the re-union of the severed kingdoms 
under the house of David. Undoubtedly it 
was an awkward circumstance that the sub- 
jects of one king should be obliged thus 
often to resort to the metropolis of a neigh- 



[book IV. 

j bouring and unfriendly monarch; and still 
more, that his own kingdom should be 
drained of a considerable portion of its j 
wealth for the support of a service which I 
was exclusively confined to the now adverse 
metropolis, and for the maintenance of 
priests and Levites whose services were ren- 
dered at Jerusalem, in the presence and 
under the authority of the rival sovereign. 
This was a state of things for which, it must 
be allowed, Jeroboam was under strong and 
natural inducements to seek a remedy. His 
duty was to have trusted that God, who had 
promised to continue his kingdom if he were 
obedient, and who had, indeed, already inter- 
posed his authority to prevent Rehoboam from 
warring against him, would provide a remedy 
for these difficulties, or take measures to pre- 
vent the consequences which he apprehended. 
But Jeroboam wanted that trust in God 
which it behoved the vassal of Jehovah to 
exhibit; and he applied himself to devise 
measures of his own to meet these exigen- 
cies. The measures which he took - ere so 
bold and decisive, that they at once took 
root, and became in their development so in- 
terwoven with the political constitution of 
the country, that even the more pious suc- 
cessors of this king in the throne of Israel 
did not venture to abolish them or re-esta- 
blish the authority of the fundamental law. 

Under the pretence that Jerusalem was 
too distant for the resort of his subjects, he 
established two places of resort at the oppo- 
site extremities of his kingdom, the one in 
the north, at Dan, and the other in the south, 
at Bethel. Both of these places, it will be 
remembered, had been previously places of 
public resort — Bethel as a place of sacred 
stones, and Dan on account of the ephod and 
teraphim which the Danites had reft from 
Micah and established in that place. Then, 
to give this resort an object, he established 
at these places golden or gilded calves, in 
unquestionable imitation of the Apis and 
Mnevis of the Egyptians, among whom he 
had spent the years of his exile. We are 
not at all to suppose that he intended to in- 
troduce the worship of other gods. These 
images were doubtless intended as symbols 
of J ehovah ; and the worship rendered before 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. IV.] 

them was held to be in his honour. But, on 
account of the danger of idolatry, the use of 
all such symbols had been interdicted by the 
fundamental law of he state- and the use 
in particular of this ve-y symbol of a golden 
calf, to which ; from Egyptian contamina- 
tions, the T sraelites were (as Jeroboam must 
have known) more ? .-'/t ached than to any 
j other, had in former times brought signal 
punishment upon the Hebrews in the wilder- 
ness. • t was, then, not the worship of other 
gods, but the worship of the true God in an 
Irregular, dangsrous, and interdicted man- 
ner, which constituted the crime of Jero- 
boam, who " sinned and made Israel to sin." 

Nor d'd „he irregularities end here. Jero- 
boam made his system a complete o_ie. He 
no« or ly changed che place of concourse to 
the people, bat also altered the lime, direct- 
ing that all the fes-ivals should be observed 
a month later than the law commanded an 
altera aor by which considerable confusion 
muo. have been ? v first produced, as the law 
had pnpo'nted ibese festivals w \h a reference 
to the seasons of the vear. For this new 
i worship, temples and altars were erected at 
j Dan and Bethel and vo its support tbe fcith.es 
I and other sacerdotal dues accruing within 
i he ten tribes were directed; thus at once 
cutting off the greater part of the income of 
the establishment of Jerusalem. It is pro- 
j bable that this wealth might still have been 
retained by the Levites whose cities were 
within the limits of the kingdom, and by 
such of the Aaronic priests as might have 
chosen to conform to the new order of things. 
Bu., to the eternal honour of this much 
calumniated body, they all refused to sanc- 
tion these proceedings, or to take any part in 
such violation of the Divine law; in con- 
sequence of which they not only forfeited 
the dues which had afforded them subsist- 
ence in the ten tribes, but found it prudent 
and necessary to abandon also the cities 
which belonged to them in those tribes, and 
withdraw into the kingdom of Judah. There 
they were cheerfully received, although the 
two tribes forming that kingdom thus be- 
came burdened with the whole charge which 
had hitherto been shared among twelve 
tribes. This fact is very valuable, as show- 



325 j 

ing that the Levitical tribe had conciliated, 
^nd was entitled to, the esteem and respect 
of the people. In the end many persons be- 
longing to the other tribes, who disapproved 
of Jeroboam s innovation s, and were disposed 
to maintain their own fidelity to the spirit of 
the Mosaical institutions, followed the ex- 
ample of the Levites, and withdrew into the 
kingdom of Judah. It is not necessary to 
point out how seriously these migrations 
lessened the true strength of Jeroboam's 
kingdom and increased that of his rival. 

Jeroboam was thus left to establish a new 
priesthood for his new worship. Priests 
were accordingly appointed from all the 
tribes indiscriminately ; but, as to the im- 
portant office of high-priest, his prudence 
and ambition suggested its annexation to 
the crown, as was the case in Egypt and 
some other heathen countries. 

Jehovah was not slow in manifesting his 
displeasure ax these proceedings. At one of 
the periodical feasts (chat of Tabernacles), 
the time for which had been a 
Jeroboam was discharging tl 
of offering incense on the a 
when a prophei of God f: om 
on the spot, and denounced c 
this altar, to be executed by a future king of 
Judah, Josiah by name ; and in proof of his 
mission, announced that it should even now 
receive such a crack that its ashes should be 
scattered abroad. Hearing this, the king 
stretched forth his hand to seize the prophet, 
when his arm stiffened in the act, and could 
not be again drawn back, until the prophet 
himself interceded with God for him. At 
the same time the altar was rent, and the 
ashes strewed abroad, as the prophet had 
said. 

This message seems to have produced no 
good effect either on the king or the people ; 
and this may have been partly owing to the 
misconduct of the prophet himself ; for after 
having publicly declared that he was for- 
bidden to eat or drink in Bethel, or to make 
any stay there, he allowed himself, after 
having departed, to be imposed upon and 
brought back, and to be feasted in Bethel, 
by a sort of Balaamite prophet ; for which he 
was slain by a lion on his return home, and 



ISRAEL, FROM 990 B.C. TO 931 B.C. 



326 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



his body was brought back and buried in 
Bethel. As the prophet had thus acted 
against his own avowed orders, and had in 
consequence been destroyed with manifest 
marks of the Divine displeasure, the occa- 
j sion was doubtless taken to diminish the 
credit and effect of the mission with which 
he had been charged. 

Jeroboam lived to see three kings upon 
the throne of Judah. There arose a skir- 
mishing warfare between the two kingdoms 
in the latter, years of Rehoboam ; and in the 
| reign of his successor the war was brought 
to a great pitched battle, the result of which 
was adverse to Jeroboam. In the latter 
years of his reign the prophet Ahijah, who 
had originally communicated the Divine ap- 
pointment to him, was commissioned to de- 
nounce the death of his most hopeful son, 
Abijah, about whose sickness the wife of 
Jeroboam went to consult him in disguise. 
The prophet, though blind with age, knew 
her by the prophetic impulse which came 
upon him; and he not only told her this, 
but declared the approaching destruction of 
Jeroboam's race by a succeeding king of 
Israel ; and also announced the ultimate 
captivity of the tribes of Israel beyond the 
| Euphrates for their manifold iniquities. 
J Jeroboam himself died in the year 968 
b.c, after a reign of twenty-two years. 

His son Nadab ascended the throne in the 
second year of Asa, king of Judah. He 
reigned two years, during which he adhered 
to the system of his father, and at the end 
of which an intimate of his own, named 
i Baasha, of the tribe of Issachar, conspired 
| against him and slew him as he was laying 
| siege to Gibbethon, a fortress which the 
l Philistines retained in their possession. Ac- 
| cording to the policy of the East, Baasha 
I having slain the head of the house of Jero- 
boam, hastened to destroy all its other mem- 
bers, who might prove disturbers of his 
j safety in the throne. Thus was the denun- 
i ciation of the prophet Ahijah against the 
j house of Jeroboam speedily accomplished. 

The government of Baasha proved not 
i only offensive to Gtod but oppressive to the 
j people, on both which grounds great numbers 
i of the subjects of this kingdom sought re- 



pose in that of Judah. It was probably 
partly in consequence of the alarm which 
this constant migration of his people pro- 
duced, that Baasha entered into a skirmish- 
ing warfare with Asa king of Judah, and 
ultimately laid siege to and took the town 
of Ramah, seven miles to the north of Jeru- 
salem, which he began to rebuild and fortify, 
with the view of leaving a garrison in it to i 
check the communication with Jerusalem, ! 
and to become a point from which excursions 
might be made into the kingdom of Judah. 
This bold proceeding occasioned much alarm ! 
in Judah; but, instead of opposing it by j 
force of arms, king Asa collected all the gold | 
he could find in his own treasury, and that of 
the temple, and sent it to Ben-Hadad, the 
king of Syria, to induce him to make a di- 
version in his favour. Accordingly the 
Syrians fell upon the north of Israel, and 
took all the fenced cities of Naphtali ; which 
obliged Baasha to relinquish his enterprise 
in the south, and march to the defence of his 
own territories. 

Time only confirmed Baasha in the evil 
courses which had proved the ruin of the 
house of J eroboam ; in consequence of which 
a prophet, named Jehu, the son of another 
prophet called Hanani, was sent to declare 
for his house the same doom which he had 
himself been the agent of inflicting upon 
that of Jeroboam. 

Baasha died in 943 b.c. after a reign of 
twenty-three years. 

After the death of Baasha, Israel became 
the prey of a series of sanguinary revolutions. 
His son Elah remained only two years on the 
throne, at the expiration of which he was 
assassinated during a feast by one of his 
generals, of the name of Ziniri, who then 
assumed the crown. Zimri, during the few 
days of his reign, found time to extirpate 
the whole family of his predecessor, thus ac- 
complishing upon the house of Baasha the 
doom which the prophet had declared. 

The army, which was engaged against the 
Philistines, no sooner heard of the murder of 
their king than they declared in favour of 
Omri, their own commander, and proclaimed 
him king. This new king immediately 
marched with all his forces against his rival, 



CHAP. V.] 



JUDAH, FROM B.C. 990 TO B.C. 929. 



and used such diligence that he shut him 
up in the summer capital of Tirzah. Zimri 
made no resistance, but fled to his harem, 
which he set ou fire, and perished in the 
flames. He had reigned only seven days; 
and this signal and speedy end gave occasion 
to the proverb in Israel, " Had Zimri peace, 
who slew his master 1 " 

Omri had another competitor: for while 
the army had elected him, a portion of the 
people, equally disgusted at the deed of 
Zimri, had made Tibni king. The kingdom 
was thus split into factions, and it was only 
after a civil war of six years that the faction 
of Omri prevailed, and Tibni was put to 
death. Omri reigned above five years after 
this. He was more guilty before God than 
any of his predecessors, for he appears to 
have taken measures to turn into actual 
idolatry that which under the former kings 
had only been an irregular and interdicted 



form of worship and service. Finding some 
disadvantages in the situation of Tirzah, 
however pleasant, for a metropolis, Omri 
purchased a hill of a person called Samar for 
two talents of silver (750?.), and built there- 
on a city, which, after the name of the pre- 
vious owner of the site, he called Samaria, 
and made it the capital of his dominion. So 
well was the situation chosen, that the city 
remained the metropolis of the kingdom 
while the kingdom endured, and was still a 
place of importance when the Hebrews 
ceased the second time to be a nation. There 
are some respects in which its site is deemed 
by travellers preferable to that of Jeru- 
salem. 

After his reign of eleven completed years, 
counted as twelve in the Scriptures, because 
he had entered on the twelfth, Omri died in 
the year 931, B.C., being the thirty-ninth 
year of Asa king of Judah. 



CONTEMPORARY KINGS. 



Kings of Israel. 



Jeroboam 



.c 990 



Nadab 



Elah . 
Zirnri 
Omri 



Died 



966 
943 
942 
942 
931 



Kings of Judah. 

Rehoboam J 

Abijah 

Asa 



Died 



929 



CHAPTER V. 
JUDAH, from b.c. 990 to b.c. 929. 



Except in its first act, the commencement of ! 
Rehoboam's reign was not blameworthy, nor, 
as it respects his separate kingdom, unpros- 
perous. In those days the wealth and wel- 
fare of a state was deemed to consist in a 
numerous population ; and of this kind of 
strength the kingdom of Judah received 
large additions by migration from that of 
Israel, through the defection of the Levitical 



! body, and the discontent with which a large 
and valuable portion of the population re- 
garded the arbitrary innovations of Jero- 
boam. It may indeed be, in a great degree, 
imputed to this cause, that, although so 
much inferior in territorial extent, the king- 
dom of Judah appears throughout the history 
of the two kingdoms to be at least equal to 
that of Israel. 



328 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



Rehoboam, seeing that lie had an adverse 
kingdom so near at hand, employed the first 
years of his reign in putting his dominions 
in a condition of defence. He built and 
fortified a considerable number of places in 
Judah and Benjamin, which he stored well 
with arms and victuals, and in which he 
placed strong garrisons. For three years he 
remained faithful to the principles of the 
theocracy, and received a full measure of the 
prosperity which had been promised to such 
obedience. . But when he beheld himself, as 
he deemed, secure and prosperous in his 
kingdom, his rectitude, which appears never 
to have been founded on very strong princi- 
ples, gave way. It was not long before the 
acts which stained the later years of his 
father were more than equalled by him. Not 
only was idolatry openly tolerated and prac- 
tised, but also the abominable acts, outra- 
geous even to the mere instincts of morality, 
which some of these idolatries sanctioned or 
required. Thus the abominations of Judah 
very soon exceeded those of Israel. And we 
shall, throughout the historical period on 
which we have entered, observe one very 
important distinction in the religious (which, 
according to the spirit of the Hebrew insti- 
tutions, means also the political) condition 
of the two kingdoms. Israel rested with 
tolerable uniformity in a sort of interme- 
diate system between the true religion and 
idolatry, with enough of elementary truth to 
preserve some show of fidelity to the system, 
and enough of idolatry and human inven- 
tion to satisfy the corrupt tendencies of the 
age and country. Hence, while on the one 
hand, it never, under its best kings, reached 
that purity of adherence to the Mosaicai 
system which was sometimes exemplified in 
the sister kingdom ; so, on the other, it never, 
or very rarely, fell to those depths of iniquity 
to which Judah sometimes sunk under its 
more wicked and weak kings. For Judah, 
resting on no such intermediate point as had 
been found in Israel, was in a state of con- 
stant oscillation between the extremes of 
good >and evil. 

In the case of Rehoboam, the loose prin- 
ciples which prevailed at the latter end of 
his father's reign, together with the fact 



that the mother, from whom his first ideas 
had been imbibed, was an Ammonitess, may 
partly account for the extreme facility of 
his fall. Indeed, with reference to the latter 
fact, it may be observed that among the 
kings there is scarcely one known to be son 
of a foreign and consequently idolatrous 
mother, who did not fall into idolatry — a 
circumstance which is sufficient alone to ex- 
plain and justify the policy by which such 
connections were forbidden. 

The chastisement of Rehoboam and his 
people was not long delayed. It was in- 
flicted by the Egyptians, who, in the fifth 
year of Rehoboam, invaded the land, under 
Shishak their king, in such strong force as 




[Shishak, king of Egypt. Thebes.] 

intimated the expectation of a more formi- 
dable resistance than was encountered ; or 
rather, perhaps, was designed to shorten the 
war by overawing opposition. There were 
1200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, and a vast 
body of infantry, the latter composed chiefly 
from the subject nations of Libya and 
Ethiopia. Shishak took with ease the fenced 
cities on which Rehoboam had placed so 
much reliance; and when he appeared be- 
fore Jerusalem, that city appears to have 
opened its gates to him. Here he reaped 
the first-fruits of that rich spoil, from the 
gold of the temple and of the palace, which 
supplied so many subsequent demands. In 
the extremity of distress, while the city was 
in the hands of an insulting conqueror, who 
stripped the most sacred places of their 



CHAP. V.] 



JTJDAHj FROM B.C. 990 TO B.C. 929. 



329 



costly ornaments and wealth, the king of 
Judah and his people turned repentingly to 
God, and implored deliverance from his 
hand. He heard them ; and inclined Shi- 
shak to withdraw with the rich spoil be 
had gained, without attempting to retain 
permanenc possession of his conquest. Asto- 
nished himself at the facility with which 
that conquest had been made, this king de- 
spised the people who had submitted so un- 
resistingly to his arms, and, according to the 
testimony of Herodotus* cited by Josephus 
himself, he erected, ao different points on 
his march home, fcwumphal cohimns charged 
with emblems very little to the honour of the 
nation which had doo opposed him. 

Although ic " Q difficult to assign a specific 
reason, bey on J a conqueror" s thirst for spoil, 
for this invasion of the dominions of the son 
by a power which had been so friendly to the 
father, it does not strike us, as it does some 
writers, that the difficulty is increased by 
the fact 0:' the matrimonial alliance which 
Solomon had formed with the royal family 
of Egypt. Rehoboam was born before that 
alliance was contracted, and he and his 
mother were not likely to be regarded with 
much favour by the Egyptian princess or 
her family. Indeed it would seem that she 
had died, or her influence had declined, or 
her friends deemed her wronged, before the 
latter end of Solomon's reign ; for it is evi- 
dent that the king of Egypt, this very 
Shishak, was not on the most friendly terms 
with Solomon, sirce he granted his favour 
1 and protection to the fugitive Jeroboam, 
whose prospective pretensions to divide the 
kingdom With the son of Solomon forms the 
only apparent ground of the distinction with 
which he was treated. This circumstance 
may direct attention to what appears to us 
the greater probability, that the expedition 
was undertaken at the suggestion of Jero- 
boam, who had much cause to be alarmed at 
tue defection of his subjects to Rehoboam, 
and at the diligence which that king em- j 
ployed in strengthening his kingdom. The j 
rich plunder which was to be obtained would, j 
when pointed out, be an adequate induce- 
ment to the enterprise. 

* Herod, i. 105. 



The severe lesson administered by this in- 
vasion to Rehoboam. and his people was not 
in vain, for we read no more of idolatrous 
abominations during the eleven remaining 
years of this reign. In consequence, these 
were rather prosperous years for the king- 
dom ; and, save a few skirmishes with the 
king of Israel, we learn of no troubles by 
which it was, during these years, disturbed. 
But, like his father, Rehoboam " desired 
many wives." His harem contained eighteen 
wives and sixty concubines, — a number 
which, we cannot doubt, was much opposed 
to the notions of the Hebrew people, although 
it seems rather moderate as compared with 
the establishment of Solomon, or those which 
we still find among the kings of the East. 
Of all his wives, the one Rehoboam loved the 
most was Maacha, a daughter (or grand- 
daughter t) of Absalom. Her son, Abijah, he 
designed for his successor in the throne ; to 
ensure which object he made adequate pro- 
vision for his other sons while he lived, and 
prudently separated them from each other, 
by dispersing them through his dominions as 
governors of the principal towns. This policy 
was successful; for although this king had 
twenty eight sons, besides three-score daugh- 
ters, his settlement of the crown was not dis- 
puted at his death. This event took place 
injthe year 973 B.C., in the eighteenth year 
of his reign. 

Abijah, otherwise called Abijam, succeeded 
his father, and the first public act of his 
short reign appears to justify the preference 
which had been given to him. Jeroboam, 
whose policy it was to harass and weaken 
the house of David, and to render the two 
kingdoms as inimical to each other as pos- 

t This lady is mentioned in three places, and in all of 
them the name of her father is differently given. In 1 
Kings xv. 2, it is " Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom;" 
in 2 Chron. xi. 20, " Maachah, the daughter of Absalom ;" 
and in 2 Chron. xiii., " Michaiah, the daughter of Uriel of 
Gibeah." The Jews believe that Absalom the son of 
David is intended. This does not appear quite certain; 
but if so, we may take their explanation that Maachah 
was the daughter of Tamar, the daughter cf Absalom ; in 
which case, the comparison of texts will intimate that 
Uriel married Tamar, and Maachah was their daughter, 
which consequently makes her the grand-daughter of Ab- 
salom and daughter of Uriel. This, upon the whole, seems 
more probable than that the several names, Abishalom, Ab- 
salom, and Uriel, all point to the same person as the father 
of Maachah. 



330 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



sible, thought the succession of the new king, 
young and inexperienced, a favourable oppor- 
tunity for an aggressive movement. He 
seems therefore to have made a general 
military levy, which amounted to the prodi- 
gious number of 800,000 men. Abijah, when 
he heard of this formidable muster, was not 
discouraged, but, although he could raise 
only half the number of men, took the field 
against his opponent. They met near Mount 
Zemarim, on the borders of Ephraim. The 
armies were drawn out in battle array, when 
Abijah, who was posted on an elevated spot, 
finding the opportunity favourable, beckoned 
with his hand, and began to harangue Jero- 
boam and the hostile army. His speech was 
good, and to the purpose ; but it does not 
seem to us entitled to the unqualified praise 
which it has generally received. He began 
with affirming the divine right of the house 
of David to reign over all Israel, by virtue of 
the immutable covenant by which Jehovah 
had promised to David that his posterity 
should reign for ever. Consequently he 
treated the secession of the ten tribes as an 
unprincipled act of rebellion against the 
royal dynasty of David, and against God — 
an act whereby the crafty Jeroboam, with a 
number of vain and lawless associates, had 
availed themselves of the weakness and inex- 
perience of Rehoboam to deprive the chosen 
house of its just rights. This statement 
doubtless embodies the view which the house 
of David, and the party attached to its inte- 
rests, took of the recent event. They re- 
garded as a rebellion what was truly a 
revolution ; and which, although, like other 
revolutions, it had its secret springs (as in 
the jealousy between the tribes of Ephraim 
and Judah), was not only justifiable in its 
abstract principles, but on the peculiar 
theory of the Hebrew constitution : for it had 
the previous sanction and appointment of 
Jehovah, as declared to both parties ; and, 
in its immediate cause, sprung from a most 
insulting refusal of the representative of the 
dynasty to concede that redress of griev- 
ances which ten-twelfths of the whole nation 
demanded, and which it had a right to de- 
mand and obtain before it recognised him as 
king. However, a king of Judah could not 



well be expected to take any other than a 
dynastic and party view of this great ques- 
tion : and that such, necessarily, was the 
view of Abijah is what we have desired to 
explain, as the generally good spirit of his 
harangue has disposed hasty thinkers to take 
the impression -which he intended to convey. 

With more justice, Abijah proceeded to 
animadvert on the measures — the corruptions 
and arbitrary changes — by which Jeroboam 
had endeavoured to secure his kingdom; 
and, with becoming pride, contrasted this 
with the beautiful order in which, according 
to the law of Moses, and the institutions of 
David and Solomon, the worship of Jehovah 
was conducted by the Levitical priesthood 
in that "holy and beautiful house" which 
the Great King honoured with the visible 
symbol of his inhabitancy He concluded: 
" We keep the charge of Jehovah our God ; 
but ye have forsaken him. And, behold, 
God himself is with us for our captain, and 
his priests with sounding trumpets to cry 
alarm against you. O children of Israel, 
fight not against Jehovah the God of your 
fathers; for ye shall not prosper."* 

By Jeroboam this harangue was only 
viewed as an opportunity for executing a 
really clever military operation. He secretly 
ordered a body of men to file round the hill, 
and attack the Judahites in the rear, while 
he assailed them in front. This manoeuvre 
was so well executed, that Abijah, by the 
time he had finished his speech, perceived 
that he was surrounded by the enemy. The 
army of Judah raised a cry of astonishment 
and alarm, and a universal panic would in 
all likelihood have ensued. But the priests 
at that instant sounded their silver trumpets, 
at which well-known and inspiriting signal 
the more stout-hearted raised a cry for help 
to Jehovah, and rushed upon the enemy; 
and their spirited example raised the cou- 
rage and faith of the more timid and 
wavering. The host of Israel could not 
withstand the force which this Divine 
impulse gave to the arm of Judah. Their 
dense mass was broken and fled, and of the 
whole number it is said not fewei than 
500,000 were slain — a slaughter, as Jose- 

* Chron. xiii. 11, 12. 



CHAP. V.] 



JUDAH, PROM B.C. 990 TO B.C. 929. 



331 



phus* remarks, such as never occurred in 
any other -war, whether it were of the Greeks 
or the barbarians. This would still be true 
if the number had been much smaller. " In 
numbers so large," Jahnf remarks, " there 
may be some error of the transcribers ; but 
it is certain that after this defeat the king- 
dom of Israel was considerably weakened, 
while that of Judah made constant progress 
in power and importance. We must here 
mention, once for all, that, owing to the 
mistakes of transcribers in copying numerals, 
we cannot answer for the correctness of the 
great numbers of men which are mentioned 
here and in the sequel. When there are no 
means of rectifying these numbers, we set them 
down a-i they occur in the books." Such also 
is our own practice. 

This great victory was pursued by Abijah, 
in the retaking and annexation to his domi- 
nion of some border towns and districts, 
some of which had originally belonged to 
Judah and Benjamin, but which the Israel- 
ites had found means to include in their 
portion of the divided kingdom. Among 
these towns was Bethel; and this being the 
seat o£ one of the golden calves, the loss of 
it must have been a matter of peculiar 
mortification to Jeroboam, and of triumph 
to Abijah. 

The reign of Abijah was not by any means 
answerable to the expectations which his 
speech and his victory are calculated to 
excite. We are told that " he walked in all 
the sins of his father," and that "his heart 
was not perfect with Jehovah his God;" by 
which it would appear that he did not take 
sufficient heed to avoid and remove the 
idolatries and abominations which Solomon 
and Rehoboam had introduced or tolerated. 
He died in 970 B.C., after a reign of three 
years, leaving behind him twenty-two sons 
and sixteen daughters, whom he had by 
fourteen wives. 

The son who succeeded him was named 
Asa. He was still very young, and the 
affairs of the kingdom appear for some time 
to have been administered by his grand- 
mother, Maachah, whose name has already 
been mentioned. Asa, for his virtues, his 

* Antiq. viii. 2, 3. t Book v. sect. 36. 



fidelity to the principles of the theocracy, 
and the prosperity and victory with which 
he was in consequence favoured, takes place 
in the first rank of the kings of Judah. He 
enjoys the high character that " his heart 
was perfect with Jehovah all his days:" and 
" he did that which was right with Jehovah, 
as did his father David." His first cares 
were directed towards the utter uprooting of 
the idolatries and abominations which had 
been suffered to creep in during the preceding 
reigns. He drove from- his states the cor- 
rupters of youth, and with an unsparing 
hand he purged Jerusalem of the infamies 
which had long harboured there. The idols 
were overthrown and broken in pieces, and 
the groves which had sheltered the dark 
abominations of idolatry were cut down: 
even his grandmother, Maachah, he deprived 
of the authority — removing her from being 
queen — which she had abused to the encou- 
ragement of idolatry; and the idols which 
she had set up he utterly destroyed. By 
thus clearing them from defiling admixtures, 
the pure and grand doctrines and practices 
of the Mosaical system shone forth with a 
lustre that seemed new in that corrupt age. 
Again the priests of Jehovah were held in 
honour by the people ; and again the temple, 
its past losses being in part repaired by the 
royal munificence, was provided with all 
that suited the dignity of the splendid ritual 
service there rendered to God ; for Asa was 
enabled to replace with silver and gold a 
portion of the precious things which Shishak 
had taken from the temple, and which 
Rehoboam had supplied with brass. 

Ten years of prosperity and peace rewarded 
the pious zeal of the king of Judah. In 
these years much was done by him to 
strengthen and improve his kingdom, espe- 
cially in repairing and strengthening the 
fortified towns, and in surrounding with 
strong walls and towers many which had not 
previously been fortified. We are also 
informed that Asa had an army of 300,000 
out of Judah, who bore shields and spears ; 
and of 280,000 out of Benjamin, who bore 
shields and drew bows : all these were men 
of valour. This and other passages of the 
same nature, describing the immense mili- 



332 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV, 



tary force of the small kingdoms of Judah 
and Israel (even setting aside those which 
labour under the suspicion of having been 
altered by the copyists), appear to intimate 
that the general enrolment for military 
service which David contemplated, but was 
prevented from completely executing, was 
accomplished by later kings. It is always 
important to remember, however, that the 
modern European sense of the word, army, 
as applied to a body of men exclusively 
devoted to a military profession, is unknown 
to the history of this period ; and in the 
statement before us we are to see no more 
than that the men thus numbered were 
provided with weapons (or that the king 
had weapons to arm them), and were, the 
whole or any part of them, bound to obey 
any call from the king into actual service. 

An occasion for such a call occurred to 
Asa after ten years of prosperity and peace. 
His dominions were then exposed to a most 
formidable invasion from " Zerah the Ethio- 
pian," or Cushite, with a million of men and 
three hundred chariots. It is beyond the 
range of probability, from the state of Egypt 
at this time, in the reign of Osorkon I.*, who 
succeeded Sheshonk (or Shishak), that an 
army under Zerah should have marched 
through Egypt from the Ethiopia south of 
the cataracts -of the Nile. It must therefore 
be concluded that the army was partly 
composed of the Cushites (or Ethiopians) of 
Arabia, the original seat of all the Cushites ; 
and as the army was partly composed of 
Libyans, who, if this supposition be cor- 
rect, could not well have passed from 
Africa through the breadth of Egypt on 
this occasion, it may, with very sufficient 
probability, be conjectured that they formed 
a portion of the Libyan auxiliaries in the 
army with which Shishak invaded Palestine, 
twenty-five years before, and who, instead of 
returning to their own deserts, deemed it 
quite as well to remain in those of Arabia 
Petrsea, and in the country between Egypt 
and Palestine. And this explanation seems 
to be confirmed by the fact, which appears 
in the sequel, that they held some border 

* His name is so given in the monuments, but in ancient 
writers it is Osorthon. 



towns (such as Gerar) in this district, The 
flocks and herds, and the tents of the invading 
host, sufficiently intimate the nomade cha- 
racter of the invasion. 

This emergency was met by Asa in the 
true spirit of the theocracy. Fully conscious 
of the physical inadequacy of his force to 
meet the enemy, he nevertheless went forth 
boldly to give them battle, trusting in Jeho- 
vah, who had so often given his people the 
victory against far greater odds, and to 
whom he made the public and becoming 
appeal : — " Jehovah, it is nothing with 
thee to help, whether with many or with 
them that have no power : Help us, Je- 
hovah, our God ; for we rest on thee, and in 
thy name we go against this multitude. 
Jehovah, thou art our God; let not man 
prevail against thee." The consequence of 
this proper manifestation of reliance upon 
their Omnipotent King was a very splendid 
victory over the Cushites. They were de- 
feated in the great battle of Mareshaht, in 
the valley of Zephathah, and fled before the 
army of Judah, which commenced a vigorous 
pursuit, attended with great slaughter. The 
Ethiopians and Libyans fled towards their 
tents and to Gerar and other towns, which 
some of them (we have supposed the Libyans) 
occupied on the border land towards Phi- 
listia. Here the conquerors found a rich 
spoil of cattle from the camps of the nomades, 
and of goods from the towns. On their 
triumphal return, they* were met by the 
prophet Obed, who excited the piety and 
gratitude of the king and his army by 
reminding them to whom the victory was 
really due, even to Jehovah; and he called 
to their remembrance the privilege they 
enjoyed, as contrasted with the kingdom of 
Israel, in the marked and beneficent protec- 
tion and care of their Great King, ana 
hinted at the duties which resulted from the 
enjoyment of such privileges. This was 
attended with very good effects ; and in the 
warmth of his gratitude for the deliverance 
with which he had been favoured, Asa pro- 
secuted his reforms with new vigour. He 
rooted out every remnant of idolatry, and 

\ This was a town fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chron. 
xi. 8). It was the birthplace of the prophet Micah. 



CHAP. V.] 



JTTDAH, FKOM B.C. 



990 to b.c. 929. 



333 



engaged the whole people to renew their 
covenant wiMi Jehovah. 

It appears .hat the effect of the manifest 
tokens of ^e Divine favour which Asa 
received, especial 1 v in the great victory over 
Zerah, was felt in the neighbouring kingdom, 
and induced large numbers of the subjects 
of Baashr. to migrate into his dominions. A 

j constant and large accession of men, induced 
by such consic 1 ? rations, and by revived 
attachment to the theocracy, was calculated 

! to give, and die 1 give, a vast superiority of 

| moral character to the kingdom of Judah. 
L Wcvs probably, p-s intimated in the last 
chapter, ^his tendency of bis most valuable 
subjects to migrate imo-j adab. which induced 
Baasha go take be town of Ramah, pad 
fortify it for a lrontie barrie . The neasure 
which. As? to<*\ on .bis occasion, oi bring 
the king oi Syria to forego his ,> evious 
alliance with Baasaa, and cause a diversion 
in hi: own .avour by invading the kingdom 
of israel. was effectual as to ne recovery o" 
Ramah; for the death of Er^sha, the follow- 
ing year, prevented bun from resuming his 
designs. A.^ availed himself oi the mate- 
rials which Baasha had brought together for 
the fortification of Eamah, to fortify the 
towns of Geba and iVuzpeh. This advantage 
was, bow ever, dearly purchased by the 
treasure of the temple and Jie palace which 
be was obliged to squander, to secure the 
assistance of che Syrians- and still more, by 
the displeasure of God. who denounced this 
proceeding as not only wrong in itself, but 
as indicating a want of that confidence in 
Him through which he h?C been enabled to 
overthrow the vast host which the Cushites 
brought against him. This intimation of 
the Divine displeasure was conveyed to the 
king by the prophet Hanani, and was 
received by Asa with such resentment that 
he put the messenger in prison. Indeed, be 
appears to have grown increasingly irritable 
in the later years of his reign, in consequence 
of which he was led to commit many acts of 
severity and injustice. But for this some 

i allowance may be made, in consideration of 
his sufferings from a disease in his feet, 
which appears to have been the gout. With 



reference to this disease, Asa incurs some 
blame in the Scriptural narrative for his 
resort to " the physicians instead of relying 
upon God;" the cause of which rather 
extraordinary censure is probably to be 
found in the fact that those physicians who 
were not priests or Levites (in whose hands 
the medical science of the Hebrews chiefly 
rested) were foreigners and idolaters, who 
trusted more to superstitious rites and in- 
cantations than to the simple remedies which 
nature offered. With all these defects, for 
which much allowance may be made, Asa 
bears a good character in the Scriptural 
narrative, on account of the general rectitude 
of his conduct, and of his zealous services in 
upholding the great principles of the theo- 
cracy. 

Asa died in the year 929 b.c, in the second 
year of Ahab, king of Israel, and after a 
long and, upon the whole, prosperous reign 
of forty-one years. He was sincerely lamented 
by all his subjects, who, according to their 
mode of testifying their final approbation, 
honoured his remains with a magnificent 
funeral. His body, laid on a bed of state, 
was burned with vast quantities of aromatic 
substances; and the ashes, collected with 
care, were afterwards deposited in the 
sepulchre which he had prepared for himself 
on Mount Zion. The burning- of the dead, 
as a rite of sepulture, had originally been 
regarded with dislike by the Hebrews. But 
a change of feeling in this matter had by 
this time taken place; for the practice is 
not now mentioned as a new thing, and had 
probably been some time previously intro- 
duced. Afterwards burning was considered 
the most distinguished honour which could 
be rendered to the dead, and the omission of 
it, in the case of royal personages, a dis- 
grace*. But in later days the Jews con- 
ceived a dislike to this rite ; and their 
doctors endeavoured, in consequence, to 
pervert the passages of Scripture which 
refer to it, so as to induce a belief that 
the aromatic substances alone, and not the 
body, were burnt. 

* See 2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxi. 19; Jer. xxxiv. 5; Amos 
vi. 10. 



J 



334 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV- 



COXTEHPOKAKY KIXGS. 

Klngs op Judah. Kixgs of Israel. 

Rehoboam B.C. 990 Jeroboam B.C. 990 

Abijah 



Died 



973 
970 



929 



Baasha . . . 
Elah . . . 
Zimri and Omri 
Ahab . . . 



Died 



966 
943 
942 
931 

909 



CHAPTER VI. 



ISRAEL, from 931 b.c. to 895 B.C. 



Ahab, the son of Omri, mounted the throne 
of Israel in the year 931 B.C., being the thirty- 
eighth year of Asa, king of Judah. This king 
was, throughout his reign of twenty-two years, 
entirely under the influence of his idolatrous 
and unprincipled wife, Jezebel, a daughter of 
Ethbaal, or Ithobalus, king of Tyre. Hitherto 
the irregularities connected with the service 
before the golden calves, as symbols of Jeho- 
vah, had formed the chief offence of Israel. 
But now Ahab and Jezebel united their au- 
thority to introduce the gods of other nations. 
The king built a temple in Samaria, erected 
an image, and consecrated a grove to Baal, 
the god of the Sidonians. Jezebel, earnest 
in promoting the worship of her own god, 
maintained a multitude of priests and pro- 
phets of Baal. In a few years idolatry be- 
came the predominant religion of the land ; 
and Jehovah, and the golden calves as repre- 
sentations of him, were viewed with no more 
reverence than Baal and his image. It now 
appeared as if the knowledge of the true God 
was for ever lost to the Israelites; but Elijah 
the prophet boldly stood up, and opposed 
himself to the authority of the king, and 
succeeded in retaining many of his country- 
men in the worship of Jehovah. The greater 
the power was which supported idolatry, so 
much the more striking were the prophecies 
and miracles which directed the attention of 



the Israelites to Jehovah, and brought dis- 
grace upon the idols, and confusion on their 
worshippers. The history of this great and 
memorable struggle gives to the narrative of 
Ahab's reign an unusual prominence and ex- 
tent in the Hebrew annals ; and although a 
writer studious of brevity might at the first 
view be disposed to omit, as episodical, much 
of the history of Elijah the Tishbite*, a little 
reflection will render it manifest that the pro- 
minence given to the history of this illustrious 
champion for the truth, was a designed and 
necessary result from the fact that the his- 
tory of the Hebrew nation is the history of a 
church; and that, although the history of this 
great controversy might be omitted or over- 
looked by those who erroneously regard the 
history of the Hebrews merely as a 'political 
history, in the other point of view it becomes 
of the most vital importance. 

The first appearance of Elijah is with great 
abruptness to announce a drought, and con- 
sequent famine, for the punishment of the 
idolatry into which the nation had fallen ; 
and that this calamity should only be re- 
moved at his own intercession. He appre- 
hended that the iniquities of the land would 

* He is introduced as " Elijah the Tishbite, who was of 
the inhabitants of Gilead." It is probable therefore that 
the designation of "Tishbite" is from some town in 
Gilead, which cannot now be clearly ascertained. 



! ' ' 

J CHAP. VI.] 

i bring down upon it destructions from God ; 
and he therefore prayed for this lesser visi- 
tation, which might possibly bring the king 
and people to repentance. 

After such a denunciation, it was necessary 
that the prophet should withdraw himself 
from the presence and solicitations of the 
king, when the drought should commence, 
which it did, probably, about the sixth year 
of Ahab. Accordingly, obeying the direc- 
tions of the divine oracle, he withdrew to his 
native district beyond Jordan, and hid him- 
self in a cave by the brook Cherith ; where 
the providence of God secured his support 
by putting it into the hearts of the Arabs* 
encamped in the neighbourhood to send him 
bread and meat every morning and evening ; 
and the brook furnished him with drink, 
until u the end of the year," or beginning 
of spring, when it was dried up from the 
continued drought. 

It was probably under the irritation pro- 
duced by the first pressure of the calamity, 
' that Jezebel induced the king to issue orders 
| for the destruction of all the prophets of Je- 
| hovah. Many of them perished : but a good 
and devout man, even in the palace of Ahab, 
— Obadiah, the steward of his household, — 
managed to save a hundred of the number 
by sheltering them in caverns, where he pro- 
vided for their maintenance until, probably, 
an opportunity was found for their escape 
| into the kingdom of Judah. 
; When the brook of Cherith was dried up, 
| the prophet was directed by the Divine 
Voice to proceed westward to Sareptaf, a 
town of Sidon, under the dominion of Jeze- 
bel's father ; where he lodged with a poor 
widow, and was miraculously supported with 
her and her family for a considerable time, 
according to his own prediction — that her 
| single barrel of meal should not waste, nor 
I her single cruse of oil fail, until that day 
when Jehovah should send rain upon the 
earth. While he remained at this place, the 

* The Hebrew word, orebim, may mean ravens, or Ara- 
: biatut, or Orebim as a proper name, or strangers. With- 
j out any wish to lessen a miracle, we have adopted what we 
j consider the more likely interpretation, as an unnecessary 
multiplication of miracles tends to their depreciation, 
t Now called Sarphan, about three hours' journey from 
j Sidon on the way to Tyre. 



335 

prophet, by his prayers to God, restored to 
life the son of the widow with whom he 
lodged. Here he stayed until the end of 
three years from the commencement of the 
drought, when he was commanded to go and 
show himself to Ahab. That king had mean- 
while caused the most diligent search to be 
made for him in every quarter, doubtless 
with the view of inducing him to offer up 
those intercessions through which alone the 
present grievous calamity could terminate. 
But at this time, having probably relin- 
quished this search as hopeless, the atten- 
tion of the king was directed to the dis- 
covery of any remaining supplies of water 
which might still exist in the land. He 
had, therefore, for the purposes of this ex- 
ploration, divided the country between him- 
self and Obadiah ; and both proceeded per- 
sonally to visit all the brooks and fountains 
of the land. Obadiah was journeying on 
this mission, when Elijah, who was returning 
from Sarepta, met him, and commissioned 
him to announce his arrival to Ahab. The 
king, when he saw the prophet, reproached 
him as the cause of the national calamities, 
—"Art thou he that troubleth Israel T But 
the prophet boldly retorted the charge upon 
himself and his father's house, because they 
had forsaken Jehovah and followed Baal. 
He then secured the attention of the king, 
by intimating an intention of interceding 
for rain ; and required him to call a general 
assembly of all the people at Mount Carmel, 
and also to bring all the prophets or priests 
of Baal J, and of the groves. 

There, in the audience of that vast as- 
sembly, Elijah reproached the people with 
the destruction of the prophets of Jehovah, 
of whom, he alleged, that he only remained, 
while the prophets of Baal alone were four 
hundred and fifty, fed at the table of Jezebel; 
and then he called them to account for their 
divided worship, — " How long halt ye be- 
tween two opinions 1 If Jehovah be the 
God, follow him ; but if Baal, then follow 
him." The people intimated their uncer- 
tainty by their silence to this appeal ; on 
which the prophet, fully conscious of his un- 

t It may assist the comprehension of the narrative to 
know that Baal was an impersonation of the sun. 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



336 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



limited commission, proposed a solemn sacri- 
fice to each, and "the God that answereth by 
fire (to consume his sacrifice) let him be God." 
As this was a fair trial of Baal's supposed 
power in his own element, the most zealous 
of his worshippers could make no objection 
to it, and the proposal was approved by all 
the people. Accordingly, when Baal answered 
not the earnest and ultimately maddened in- 
vocations of his prophets, — but Jehovah in- 
stantly answered the prayer of Elijah, by 
sending fire (as on former occasions) to con- 
sume the victim on the altar, although it 
had previously been inundated with water 
by the direction of the prophet, — then the 
people, yielding to one mighty impulse of 
conviction, fell upon their faces, and cried, 
" Jehovah, he is the God ! Jehovah, he is 
the God !" — thus also expressing that Baal 
was not the God, and rejecting him. To ratify 
this abjuration of Baal, Elijah commanded 
them to destroy his priests ; and this, in the 
enthusiasm of their rekindled zeal for Je- 
hovah, they immediately did, at the brook 
Kishon, which had been the scene of Barak's 
victory over the Canaanites. 

Immediately after this sublime national 
act of acknowledgment of Jehovah and re- 
jection of Baal, the prophet went up to the 
top of Carmel, and prayed fervently for rain 
seven times ; the promise of which (speedily 
followed by fulfilment) at last appeared in 
the form of " a little cloud .... like a man's 
hand," rising out of the Mediterranean sea — 
a phenomenon which, in warm maritime cli- 
mates, is not the unusual harbinger of rain. 

This remarkable transaction may be ascribed 
to the tenth year of Ahab's reign. 

Elijah was now compelled to fly for his life, 
to avoid the threatened vengeance of J ezebel 
for the destruction of her prophets. He fled 
southward, and when he had travelled nearly 
100 miles, from Samaria to Beersheba, he left 
his servant and went alone a day's journey 
into the wilderness. There as he sat, for rest 
and shelter, under the scanty shade which a 
broom tree offered, the mighty spirit by which 
he had hitherto been sustained gave way, 
and he prayed for death to end his troubles. 
" It is enough:" he cried, " now, Jehovah, 
take away my life ; for I am not better than 



my fathers !" To strengthen his sinking faith 
and to reward his sufferings in the cause 
of the God of Israel, whose honour he had 
so zealously vindicated, the prophet was en- 
couraged by an angel to undertake a long 
journey to "the mount of God," Horeb, where 
the Divine presence had been manifested to 
Moses, the founder of the law ; and of which 
a further manifestation was now probably 
promised to this great champion and restorer 
of the same law. On this mysterious occa- 
sion the angel touched him twice, to rouse 
him from his sleep, and twice made him eat 
of food which he found prepared for him. 
In the strength which that food gave, the 
prophet journeyed (doubtless by a circuitous 
route) forty days, until he came, it is sup- 
posed, to the cave where Moses was stationed, 
when he saw the glory of Jehovah in " the 
cleft of the rock." 

Tliere he heard the voice of Jehovah call- 
ing to him, " What doest thou here, Elijah ?" 
The prophet, evidently recognising that voice, 
said, " I have been very jealous for Jehovah, 
the God of Hosts; for the children of Israel 
have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down 
thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the 
sword ; and I, even I, only am left ; and they 
seek my life, to take it away." Then the 
voice commanded him to go forth, for Je- 
hovah was about to pass by. The first har- 
binger of the Divine presence was a great 
and strong wind, which rent the mountain 
and brake the rock in pieces : — but Jehovah 
was not in that wind. Then followed an 
earthquake ; — but Jehovah was not in the 
earthquake. This was succeeded by a fire; 
— but Jehovah was not in the fire. After 
this, came "a still small Voice;'' and when 
the prophet heard it, he knew the Yoice of 
God, and, reverently hiding his face in his 
mantle, he stood forth in the entrance of 
the cave. The Yoice repeated the former 
question, " What doest thou here, Elijah ?" 
to which the same answer as before was re- 
turned. The Voice, in reply, gently rebuked 
the prophet for his crimination of the whole 
people of Israel, and his discouraging repre- 
sentation of himself as the only prophet left. 
" Yet I have left to me seven thousand in 
Israel which have not bowed unto Baal." 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL. FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



337 



He was further instructed to return by a 
different route, by the way of Damascus ; 
' and, by the way to anoint or appoint Elisha 
to be his own successor, and (either by 
himself or Elisha) Hazael to be King of ; 
Damascene-Syria, and Jehu to be King of 
Israel — as the chosen ministers of Divine 
vengeance upon the house and people of 
Ahab. 

Of the three, Elisha was the only one to 
whom Elijah himself made known this ap- 
pointment. Elisha was the son of Shaphat, 
an opulent man of Abel-meholah, in the half 
tribe of Manasseh, west of the Jordan. The 
prophet found him ploughing with twelve 
I yoke of oxen, when, by a significant action, 
still well understood in the East, that of 
throwing his own mantle upon him, he con- 
veyed the intimation of his prophetic call. 
That call was understood and obey ed by Elisha; 
and after having, witn the prophet's permis- 
sion, taken leave of his parents, he hastened 
to follow Elijah, to whom he ever after re- 
mained attached. 

It is singular that the first formal alliance 
between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah 
took place during the reigns of two princes 
of such opposite characters as Ahab in Israel, 
and Jehoshaphat in J udah. But it was so : 
and in forming it, and in cementing it by 
the marriage of his eldest son Jehoram to 
Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, 
he doubtless acted from very ill considered 
policy, and laid in a great store of disasters 
for himself and his house. It is unfortunate 
that we are unacquainted with the motives 
which led to this most unhappy connection. 
A close and intimate union between the two 
kingdoms could not but be, in itself, a politi- 
cal good ; and the error of Jehoshaphat pro- 
bably lay in considering this fact by itself, 
without taking due account of that evil 
character of Ahab and his house, and that 
alienation of his people from God, which were 
calculated to neutralise, and actually did far 
more than neutralise, the natural advantages 
of such alliance. The marriage took place 
in the fifteenth year of Ahab's, and the 
thirteenth of Jehoshaphat's reign. 

Not long after this, Ahab had cause to be 
alarmed at the designs of Ben-hadad, the 



King of Damascene-Syria, which kingdom 
had been gathering such strength, while that 
of the Hebrews had been weakened by divi- 
sions and by misconduct, that even the -sub- 
jugation of Israel did not seem to Ben-hadad 
an enterprise to which his ambition might 
not aspire. To this end he made immense 
preparations: he claimed the united aid of 
all his tributary princes, thirty-two in num- 
ber, and ultimately appeared with all his 
forces before Samaria, to which he laid siege. 
He first summoned Ahab to deliver up all 
his most precious things ; and, compelled by- 
dire necessity, the King of Israel consented. 
But Ben-hadad was only induced, by this 
readiness of yielding, to enhance his terms, 
and sent further demands, which were so 
very hard and insulting, that the spirit of 
Ahab was at last roused ; and, supported by 
the advice of his council, he determined to 
act on the defensive. Soon after, a prophet 
came with the promise of victory over the 
vast host of the Syrians, by means of a mere 
handful of spirited young men who were 
particularly indicated. 

The confidence of the Syrians was so great 
that they led a careless and jovial life, think- 
ing of little but of indulgence in wine and 
good cheer, of which the king himself set 
the example. In the midst of these feasts, 
a body of two hundred and thirty-two men 
was seen to leave the city, and advance to- 
wards the camp. Ben-hadad, when he heard 
of it, quietly ordered them to be taken alive, 
whether they came for peace or for war. 
But suddenly these men fell upon the ad- 
vanced sentinels, and upon all who were 
near them; and the cries and confusion of 
so many persons, taken as it were by sur- 
prise, was instrumental in creating a general 
panic among the vast Syrian host. Drawn 
himself by the irresistible movement, Ben- 
hadad fled on horseback, with all his army ; 
and the troops of Israel (7000 in number), 
which attended the motions and watched the 
effect of the sally of the brave two hundred 
and thirty-two, closely pursued the flying 
Syrians, and rendered the victory complete. 

The prophet who foretold this victory now 
apprised Ahab that Ben-hadad would renew 
his attempts the ensuing year. This took 



338 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



[BOOK IV. 



place accordingly. The Syrians came in 
equal force as before, and, as they thought, 
with wiser counsels. The kingdom of 
Damascene - Syria was mostly a plain; 
whereas the kingdom of Israel, and the 
site of Samaria in particular, was moun- 
tainous. Rightly attributing their defeat to 
the God (or, as they chose in their idolatrous 
ignorance to say, the gods) of Israel, they 
reasoned that he was a god of the hills, and 
therefore among the hills more powerful than 
their gods, who were gods of the valleys and 
the plains. Instead therefore of going among 
the hills, as before, they would now fight in 
the plains, where they could not doubt of 
success. This reasoning, however absurd it 
now seems to us, and did then seem (such 
were their privileges) to all enlightened 
Israelites, was in strict and philosophical ac- 
cordance with the first principles of idolatry, 
and the general system of national and local 
deities. But such a view being taken by 
them, it became necessary to Jehovah to vin- 
dicate his own honour and assert his omni- 
potence by their overthrow. For this reason 
he delivered this vast host that covered the 
land into the hands of the comparatively 
small and feeble host of Israel. The Syrians 
were cut in pieces ; 100,000 of their number 
were left dead upon the field of battle, and 
the rest were entirely dispersed. Ben-hadad, 
with a large number of the fugitives, sought 
refuge in Aphek ; but by the sudden fall of 
the wall of that fortified town, 27,000 of his 
men were crushed to death, and the place 
was rendered defenceless. Nothing was now 
left to him but to yield himself up to Ahab. 
That monarch, weak and criminal by turns, 
received the Syrian king into his friendship, 
and formed an impious alliance with him, 
regardless not only of the law, but of the 
honour of God, who had given him the vic- 
tory, and had delivered for punishment into 
his hands this blasphemer and enemy of his 
Great Name. For this he was, in the name 
of J ehovah, severely rebuked and threatened 
by one of " the sons of the prophets," by the 
way-side ; in consequence, he withdrew to 
his palace " heavy and displeased." 

The history of Ahab affords one more, and 
the last, interview between him and Elijah. 



This was about nine years after the grand 
solemnity at Mount Carmel, and the nine- 
teenth of Ahabs reign. 

At that time the king took a fancy to 
enlarge his own garden by taking into it an 
; adjoining vineyard which formed part of the 
\ patrimonial estate of a person named Xaboth. 
I He made him the fair offer of its value in 
money, or to give him some other piece of 
land of equal value ; but JSaboth, considering 
it a religious duty to preserve " the inherit- 
I ance of his fathers," declined on any terms 
to alienate it. The reason was good, and 
ought to have satisfied the king. But he 
received the refusal like a spoiled child ; 
he lay down upon his bed, and turned away 
his face to the wall, and refused to take his 
food. "When his wife heard of this she came 
to him, and, having learned the cause of his 
grief, she said indignantly, " Dost thou now 
govern the kingdom of Israel ? Arise, and 
eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: / 
luiU give thee the vineyard of aSaboth, the 
Jezreelite." Accordingly, she procured Xa- 
both to be put to death under the form of 
law. At a public feast he was accused by 
suborned witnesses of blasphemy, for which 
he was stoned to death, and his estates con- 
fiscated to the king. Jezebel then went to 
Ahab, apprised him of what had happened, 
and told him to go down and take possession 
of the vineyard. It is clear that, if he did 
not suggest, he approved of the crime, and 
proceeded with joy to reap the fruits of it. 
But in the vineyard of JSaboth the unex- 
pected and unwelcome sight of Elijah the 
prophet met his view. Struck by his own 
conscience, he cried, " Hast thou found me, 
O mine enemy?" To which Elijah replied. 
" I have found thee: because thou hast sold 
thyself to work evil in the sight of Jehovah." 
He then proceeded to denounce the doom of 
utter extermination upon himself and his 
house for his manifold iniquities ; and then, 
with reference to the immediate offence, he 
said, " Hast thou killed, and also taken pos- 
session ? . . . . Thus saith Jehovah. In the 
place where dogs licked the blood of Xaboth. 

shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine 

And of Jezebel also spake Jehovah, saving. 
The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



339 



1 



Jezreel. Him who dieth of Ahab in the city 
the dogs shall eat ; and him that dieth in 
the field shall the fowls of the air eat." We 
are immediately reminded, however, that 
this terrible doom, although now denounced, 
as following this crowning deed of guilt, was 
really a consequence of this and all the other 
iniquities of Ahab's reign ; for it is added, 
" There was none like unto Ahab, which did 
sell himself to work wickedness in the sight 
of Jehovah, whom Jezebel bis wife stirred up. 
And he did very abominably in following 
idols, according to all things as did the 
Amorites, whom Jehovah cast out before the 
| children of Israel." 

When Ahab heard the heavy doom pro- 
nounced against him by the prophet, " he 
rent his clothes (in token of extreme grief), 
and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, 
and lay in sackcloth, and went softly." 
This conduct found some acceptance with 
God, who said to Elijah, "Seest thou how 
Ahab humbleth himself before me ? Because 
he humbleth himself before me, I will not 
bring the evil in his days : but in his son's 
days will I bring this evil upon his house." 
From the judicial sentence specially ap- 
plicable to the case of Naboth, there was, 
however, no dispensation ; as it behoved the 
Divine king to demonstrate that he still 
possessed and exercised the authority of 
supreme civil governor, and that the kings 
were responsible to him and punishable by 
him. This was signally shown in the sequel. 

Israel was now at peace with Syria, but it 
had not recovered possession of all the 
places which had at different times been lost 
to that power. Of these, Ramoth Gilead, 
beyond Jordan, was one of which, from its 
proximity and importance, Ahab was par- 
ticularly anxious to regain possession. He 
therefore resolved to expel the Syrian gar- 
rison from that place ; and as he was aware 
that the attempt would be opposed by the 
; whole power of the Syrian kingdom, he 
! claimed the assistance of Jehoshaphat, the 
king of Judah, which that prince, with the 
facility of disposition which formed the chief 
defect of his excellent character, very readily 
granted. Nevertheless, when the preparations 
were completed, Jehoshaphat, unsatisfied by 



the assurances of success which Ahab's own 
"prophets" had given, desired that some 
other prophet of Jehovah should be consulted. 
This request was more distasteful to Ahab 
than he liked to avow. "There is yet one man,"' 
he said, " Micaiah, the son of Imlah, . . . „ . 
but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy 
good concerning me, but evil." He was, 
however, sent for: and although the mes- 
senger had strongly inculcated upon him the 
necessity of making his counsel conformable 
to the wishes of the king and the predictions 
of his own prophets, the undaunted Micaiah 
boldly foretold the fatal result of the ex- 
pedition. At this the king was so much 
enraged, that he ordered him to be kept in 
confinement, and fed with the bread and 
water of affliction until he returned in peace. 
" If thou return at all in peace," rejoined the 
faithful prophet, " then Jehovah hath not 
spoken by me." 

Ben-hadad, the king of Syria, repaid the 
misplaced kindness of Ahab by the most 
bitter enmity against his person; and he 
gave strict orders to his troops that their 
principal object should be his destruction. 
Ahab seems to have had some private in- 
formation of this ; for he went, himself, 
disguised to the battle, and treacherously 
persuaded Jehoshaphat to appear in all the 
ensigns of his high rank. In consequence of 
this the king of Judah was nearly slain, 
being surrounded by the Syrians, who pressed 
towards the point in which one royally ar- 
rayed appeared. But they discovered their 
mistake in time, and turned their attention 
in another direction. Ahab, with all his 
contrivance, could not avoid his doom. A 
Syrian archer sent forth from his bow an 
arrow at random. Guided by the unseen 
Power which had numbered the days of 
Ahab, that arrow found the disguised king, 
penetrated between the joints of his strong 
armour, and gave him his death-wound. He 
directed his charioteer to drive him out of 
the battle ; but, perceiving that a general 
action was coming on, he remained, and was 
held up in his chariot until the evening, 
animating his friends by his voice and 
presence. After the fall of night had ter- 
minated the combat, the king died, and the 




340 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IY. 



army was directed to disperse. The body of 
Ahab was taken to Samaria, to be deposited 
in the family sepulchre; and to mark the 
literal fulfilment of Elijah's prophecy, the 
historian acquaints us that his chariot was 
washed, and his armour rinsed in the pool of 
Samaria, where the dogs licked up the blood 
that he had lost. Thus signally, in the 
mysterious dispensations of Divine provi- 
dence, were reconciled the seemingly dis- 
cordant declarations of two prophets, one of 
whom had foretold his death at Ramoth 
Gilead, and the other that dogs should claim 
his blood in Samaria. 

The history of Ahab is almost exclusively 
occupied with the record of his guilt, and 
we are referred for information concerning 
his other public acts to a chronicle which no 
longer exists. But it transpires that he 
built several cities in Israel, and also a 
palace, which, from the quantities of ivory 
with which it was ornamented, was distin- 
guished as " the ivory house." 

Ahab's death took place in the year 909 
B.C., after a reign of twenty-two years. 

He was succeeded in his throne and in his 
sin by his son AnAziAH. The chief event of 
his short reign was the revolt of the Moabites 
who, since their subjection by David, had 
continued to supply Israel with a rich tribute 
of flocks and fleeces*. Ahaziah himself 
having received serious injuries by a fall 
through a lattice in an upper chamber of his 
palace, sent messengers into the land of the 
Philistines, to consult Baal-zebub, the fly -god 
of Ekron, whether he should recover. But 
they were met on the way by the prophet 
Elijah, who sent them back to the king with 
a denunciation of death, for his impiety in 
forsaking the God of Israel and resorting to 
strange gods. The messengers knew not the 
prophet; but when they described him to 
the king as a man clad with a hairy garment, 
and with a leathern girdle about his loins, 
he recognised Elijah, and sent an officer with 
fifty men to apprehend him. But the prophet, 
whom they found sitting upon a hill, called 
down fire from heaven, which consumed this 

* The annual tribute rendered by the Moabites had 
been 100,000 laniDS and 100,000 wethers, with their wool. 



party, and also a second ; but he went volun- 
tarily with the third, the officer in command 
of which humbled himself before him, and 
besought him. The prophet confirmed to 
the king himself his former denunciation of 
speedy death ; and, accordingly, Ahaziah 
died, after a short reign of two years, leaving 
no son to succeed him. This king main- 
tained the alliance which his father had 
established with King Jehoshaphat, and 
even persuaded that monarch to admit him 
to share in his contemplated maritime ex- 
pedition to the regions of Ophir, of which 
there will be occasion to speak in the next 
chapter. 

Ahaziah was succeeded by his brother 
Jehoram. This king, like his predecessors, 
" wrought evil in the sight of Jehovah," yet 
not to the same extent of enormity as they ; 
for although the loose and irregular service 
of the golden calves was maintained by him, 
he overthrew the images of Baal, and dis- 
couraged the grosser idolatries which his 
father and brother had introduced. 

The first and most urgent care of the new 
king was to reduce to obedience the Moabites, 
who, as just mentioned, had revolted on the 
death of Ahab. As the king of Judah had 
himself been troubled by the Moabites, he 
readily undertook to take a very prominent 
part in this enterprise, to which he also 
brought the support of his own tributary, 
the king of Edom. The plan of the campaign 
was, that the allied army should invade the 
land of Moab in its least defensible quarter, 
by going round by " the wilderness of Edom," 
southward of the Dead Sea ; which also 
offered the advantage that the forces of the 
king of Israel could be successively joined 
by those of the kings of Judah and Edom on 
the march. This circuitous march occupied 
seven days; and towards the end of it the 
army and the horses suffered greatly from 
thirst, probably occasioned by the failure of 
the weils and brooks, from which an ade- 
quate supply of water had been expected. 
Much loss had already been incurred through 
this unexpected drought, and nothing less 
than utter ruin seemed to impend over the 
allies when they lay on the borders of Moab, 
within view of the enemy, which had ad- 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



341 



vanced to meet them. In this emergency 
the very proper course occurred to Jehosha- 
phat of consulting a prophet of Jehovah. 
I On inquiry it was discovered that Elisha, 
who had "poured water on the hands of 
Elijah" — a proverbial expression from the 
most conspicuous act of service in a personal 
attendant — was the only prophet to be found 
in that neighbourhood. Full of the faith of 
his illustrious master, this faithful disciple 
of Elijah had beheld the Jordan divide 
before that prophet, and had been with him 
when, upborne by the whirlwind, he was 
taken gloriously away from the earth in the 
chariot and horses Avhich glowed like fire, 
and who had substituted himself in his 
mission to work marvels and reprove kings 
in the name of Jehovah. Already had the 
" spirit and power of Elias," which abode in 
him, been manifested to all Israel by the 
prodigies he had wrought. The waters of 
the Jordan had divided before him, the 
second time, when smote by the fallen mantle 
of Elijah; — the bad waters of Jericho had 
become permanently wholesome at his word ; 
— and to evince the power of his curse, bears 
from the woods had destroyed forty-two 
young men belonging to idolatrous Bethel, 
who, joining unbelief to insult, had bade 
him, in terms of mockery and derision, — 
"Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald 
head ! " — ascend after his master. 

The prophet, thus already distinguished, 
was sought in his retreat by the three kings. 
His greeting of Jehoram was severe, " What 
have / to do with thee ? Get thee to the 
prophets of thy father and to the prophets 
of thy mother." Nevertheless, but avowedly 
on the sole account of the good Jehoshaphat, 
he interested himself for the salvation of the 
army, which was in such imminent danger : 
and, having consulted the Lord, he promised 
that on the morrow there should be such an 
abundance of water, that the bed of the 
torrent, near which the army was encamped, 
should not be able to contain it ; and, more 
than this, he also indicated that this should 
be but the prelude of a signal victory over 
and complete ruin of the enemy. 

All things happened as he had said. In 
the morning, at the time of offering sacrifice, 



the waters descended in such full flood from 
the heights of Edom, that the camp would 
have been submerged, had not the army, by 
the direction of the prophet, previously dug 
large ditches to receive the redundant waters. 
All this was unknown to the Moabites, who, 
when they arose in the morning, and, on 
looking towards the camp of the allies, 
beheld the lurid rays of the rising sun 
reflected from the waters, which now covered 
the arid sands of yesterday, doubted not that 
it was blood which they saw, and formed the 
not by any means improbable conclusion 
that the armies of Israel and Judah had 
quarrelled with and destroyed each other. 
They therefore rushed without the least care 
or order to the pillage of the camp ; but so far 
from finding it deserted, they were surrounded 
and cut in pieces by the armed and now in- 
vigorated allies. The remnant of the army 
was pursued into the interior of the country 
by the conquerors, whose course was black- 
ened by the fire and crimsoned by the sword. 
Ultimately they invested the metropolitan 
city of Kir-haraseth *, in which the king, 
Mesha, had taken refuge. One part of the 
walls had already been destroyed, and the 
king, seeing he could no longer defend the 
place, attempted to break through the be- 
sieging host at the head of seven hundred 
swordsmen. But failing in this desperate 
effort, he sought to propitiate his cruel gods 
by offering up the frightful sacrifice of his 
eldest son, the heir of his throne, in the 
breach. Seized with horror at this spectacle, 
the conquering kings abandoned the siege, 
withdrew from the country, and returned to 
their own states. In taking this step they 
did not consider, or, perhaps, not care, that 
they gave to the horrible act of the Moabite 
the very effect which he desired, and enabled 
him to delude himself with the persuasion 
that his sacrifice had been successful, and 
well-pleasing to the powers of heaven. 

In the remaining history of Jehoram's 
reign, the prophet Elisha occupies nearly as 
conspicuous a place as Elijah did in that of 
Ahab. The wonders wrought by his hands 
were numerous; but they were less signal, 

* The same place which is otherwise called Rabbath- 
Moab, and, classically, Areopolis. 



342 



and less attended with public and important 
results — less designed to effect public objects/ 
than those of his master. Indeed, his national 
acts were less considerable than those of 
Elijah ; and although he possessed great in- 
fluence, and was undoubtedly the foremost 
man of his age, he wanted those energies of 
character, and that consuming zeal which 
his predecessor manifested ; or, perhaps more 
correctly, the exigencies of the times were 
not such as to call for the exercise of such 
endowments as had been possessed by Elijah. 
But, although those of his successor were 
different in their kind, we know not that, 
with regard to the differing time, they were 
less useful or eminent. In this, and in a 
thousand other historical examples — more 
especially in the history of the Hebrews — 
we see men raised up for, and proportioned 
to, the times in which they live, and the 
occasions which call for them. The most 
eminent of the prophets, since Moses, was 
given to the most corrupt time; in which 
only a man of his indomitable, ardent, and 
almost fierce spirit, could have been equal to 
the fiery and almost single-handed struggle 
for God against principalities and powers. 
Elisha fell in milder times, and was cor- 
respondingly of a milder character, although 
he was not found unequal to any of 
the more trying circumstances which arose 
during the period of his prophetic adminis- 
tration. Indeed his conduct on such occasions 
was such as to suggest that it was only the 
milder spirit of the time on which he fell, 
precluding occasion for their exercise, that 
prevented the manifestation in him of that 
grander class of endowments which his pre- 
decessor displayed. As it was, Elisha, instead 
of being, like his master, driven by perse- 
cution from the haunts of men to the deserts 
and the mountains, and reduced to a state of 
dependence on the special providence of God 
for the bread he ate and the water he drank, 
— enjoyed a sufficiency of all things, and 
lived in honour and esteem among his 
countrymen ; and even among the purple 
and fine linen of kings' courts, the rough 
mantle of the prophet was regarded with 
respect. 

Ir such a history as the present it is oiJy 



[book iv. 

necessary to report those of his acts which 
were connected with, or bore upon, the pub- 
lic history of the nation ; yet his more private 
acts may be also briefly indicated for the 
sake of the illustration which they afford of 
the spirit and manners of the time. 

The first of his operations which we read 
of, after that which connected him with the 
deliverance of Israel and the defeat of the 
Moabites, was an act of benevolence towards 
the widow of one of those h sons of the pro- 
phets" who had now come under his super- 
vision. He had died without having the 
means of satisfying a debt he had incurred, 
in consequence of which the creditor was 
disposed to indemnify himself by making- 
bondsmen of her two sons ; but, on her com- 
plaint to Elisha, he multiplied a small quan- 
tity of oil which she possessed, until the 
price it brought more than sufficed to pay 
the implacable creditor. 

The occasions of the prophet frequently 
led him to visit the city of Shunem, which 
being observed by a benevolent woman, she 
suggested to her husband that they should 
prepare a small separate apartment*, and 
furnish it with a bed, a table, a seat, and a 
lamp ; and that this should be reserved for 
his use when he visited Shunem. This was 
accordingly done, and the prophet accepted 
the hospitalities of these good Shunemites. 
Elisha was very sensible of their kind atten- 
tion, and wished to repay it by some sub- 
stantial benefit-. He sent for the woman, 
and offered to speak to the king or to the 
captain of the host on her behalf. This she 
declined; and the prophet felt at a loss 
what to do for them, until it was suggested 
by his servant Gehazi that the woman had 
long been childless, on which Elisha again 
sent for her, and as she stood respectfully at 
the door, he conveyed to her the astonishing 
intimation that, nine months from thence, 
her arms should embrace a son. Accordingly, 
the child was born, and had grown up, when 
one day he received a stroke of the sun on 
his head, and died very soon. The mother 

* Called in our version *' a little chamber in the wal! 
It denotes doubtless what the Arabs still call by the sar 
name (Oleah), which is a small building, generally at so) 
distance from the house, like a summer-house in c 
gardens. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



343 



laid him on the prophet's bed, and, actuated 
by an undefinable but intelligible impulse, 
sought and obtained the permission of her 
husband to go to Elisha, who was known to 
be then at Carmel. Accordingly, an ass was 
saddled, on which, driven by a servant on 
foot, she sped to that place. Elisha saw her 
afar off, and said to Gehazi, " Behold, yonder 
is that Shunemite ! Run now, I pray thee, 
to meet her, and say unto her, — Is it well 
with thee? is it well with thy husband ? 
is it well with the child?" The bereaved 
mother answered, " It is well," but pressed 
on towards the man of God. On approaching 
him she alighted from her beast, and threw 
herself at his feet, on which she laid hold. 
The officious Gehazi drew nigh to thrust her 
away, but Elisha checked him, — " Let her 
alone ; for her soul is vexed within her : and 
Jehovah hath hid it from me, and hath not 
told me." When, in a few broken exclama- 
tions, she had made known the cause of her 
grief, the prophet gave his staff to Gehazi, 
with instructions to go and lay it on the 
face of the child. But the mother refused 
to leave the prophet, and he was induced to 
rise and return with her. They met Gehazi 
on his way back, who told them, " The child 
is not awaked!" They hasted on, and the 
prophet shut himself up with the child. It 
was not long before he directed the mother 
to be called, and presented to her the living 
boy. 




[Seething Pottage.] 

Another time, when there was a dearth in 
the land, Elisha was at the school of the 
prophets at Gilgal ; and at the proper time 
gave the order to the servants, " Set on the 
great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of 



the prophets." When this was dressed, it 
was found that a wild and bitter gourd had 
been gathered and shred into the pot by 
mistake. " thou man of God ! there is 
death in the pot ! " cried the sons of the 
prophets, when they began to eat. But 
Elisha directed a handful of meal to be cast 
into the pot, and it was found that all the 
poisonous qualities of the pottage had dis- 
appeared. 

In the kingdom of Damascene-Syria, the 
chief captain of the host, high in the favour 
and confidence of the king, was a person 
called Naaman, who had the misfortune of 
being a leper. This, which would have been 
a disqualification for all employment and 
society in Israel, could not but be a great 
annoyance and distress to a public man in 
Syria. When therefore a little Hebrew girl, 
who in a former war had been taken captive, 
and was now a slave in the household of this 
personage, was heard to say, " Would God 
my lord were with the prophet that is in 
Samaria! for he would recover him of his 
leprosy;" she was eagerly questioned on the 
matter, and the result was that the king of 
Syria sent Naaman, with a splendid retinue 
and camels laden with presents* to Samaria, 
with a sufficiently laconic letter to the king 
Jehoram. " When this letter is come unto 
thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman 
my servant to thee, that thou mayst recover 
him of his leprosy." The king of Israel was 
utterly confounded when he read this epistle. 
He rent his clothes, and cried, " Am I God, 
to kill and to make alive, that this man doth 
send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy. 
Wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how 
he seeketh a quarrel against me." Intelli- 
gence of this affair, and of the king's vexa- 
tion, was brought to Elisha, who desired that 
the Syrian stranger might be sent to him. 
Accordingly Naaman came with his chariot 
and horses and imposing retinue, and stood 
before the door of Elisha's house. The 
prophet did not make his appearance; but 
sent out a message directing him to go and 
bathe seven times in the river Jordan. The 
self-esteem of the distinguished leper was 

* The presents included ten talents of silver (3750/,) 6000 
shekels of gold (12,0007.), and ten dresses of honour. 



344 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



much hurt at this treatment. He expected 
that Elisha would have paid him personal 
attention and respect, and would have healed 
him by an appeal to his God, Jehovah, and 
by the stroking of his hand. He therefore 
turned and went away in a rage, exclaiming, 
"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of 
Damascus, better than all the waters of 
Israel? May I not wash in them and be 
clean?" His attendants, however, succeeded 
in soothing him, and persuaded him to follow 
the prophet's directions ; and when he rose, 
perfectly cleansed, from the Jordan, his 
feelings turned to conviction and gratitude ; 
he returned to Samaria, and presented him- 
self to the prophet, declaring his belief that 
Jehovah was the true and only God, and 
that henceforth he would offer burnt-offerings 
and sacrifices to no other. He would also 
have pressed upon his acceptance a valuable 
present, but this was firmly declined by 
Elisha; and when his covetous servant 
Gehazi, compromised the honour of God and 
of his own master, by following the Syrian, 
to ask a gift in the name of the prophet, the 
leprosy from which JS T aaman had been 
cleansed was declared by the prophet to be 
the abiding portion of him and of his race. 

These and other miracles wrought by this 
prophet, fixed upon him 'personally the regard 
and veneration of the people; and while there 
is reason to think that the state of manners 
and of religion was not altogether so bad as 
it had been under Ahab, the practices and 
ideas of their corrupt system of religion were 
now too closely interwoven with their habits 
of life and mind to be easily shaken off. 
They rested on their intermediate system. 
Habit had reconciled even their consciences 
to it ; and in general, to fall back upon it, 
after having strayed into foreign idolatries, 
was in their sight a complete and perfect re- 
formation. And as to the race of Ahab, that 
was hastening with rapid strides to its doom. 
The famine which about this time desolated 
the land, and the new war with the Syrians, 
which was carried on under the very walls of 
the capital, was met by the king without any 
fixed faith, or any determinate rule of con- 
duct ; sometimes he attributed his calamities 
to Elisha, and vowed his destruction ; and at 



others he resorted to that same prophet as to 
his only friend and deliverer. 

In this war the Syrians had laid an am- 
buscade, in which the king would un- 
doubtedly have perished had not Elisha 
ensured his safety by discovering the plan 
of the enemy to him. This happened more 
than once ; and the Syrian king at first 
suspected treachery in his own camp ; but 
being assured that it was owing to Elisha, 
" that telleth the king of Israel the words 
thou speakest in thy bed-chamber," he was 
much irritated, and, with singular infatua- 
tion, despatched a column of his best troops 
to invest the town of Dothan, where the pro- 
phet then abode, in such a manner that his 
escape seemed impossible to his own terrified 
servant. " Fear not," said Elisha, " for they 
that be with us are more than they that be 
with them ;" and then, praying that his eyes 
might be opened to the view of " things in- 
visible to mortal sight," he beheld the moun- 
tains full of chariots and horses, glowing like 
fire, round about the prophet. At his request, 
the Syrian troop was then smitten with blind- 
ness, and in that condition he went among 
them, and conducted them to the very gates 
of the hostile metropolis, Samaria, where 
their eyes were opened, and he dismissed 
them in peace, after inducing Jehoram to 
give them refreshment, instead of slaying 
them, as was his own wish. This generous 
conduct seems to have had such good ef- 
fect that the Syrian hordes for the present 
abandoned their enterprise, and returned to 
tbeir own country. 

After this came on a severe famine, of 
seven years' continuance, and the evils of it 
were aggravated by war, for the Syrian king 
deemed this season of weakness and exhaus- 
tion too favourable for his designs to be 
neglected. He marched directly to Samaria, 
and formally invested that strong place, 
which, seemingly, he hoped less to gain by 
force of arms than by so blockading it as 
ultimately to starve it into a surrender ; 
which work, he knew, was already more 
than half accomplished to his hands. The 
siege was protracted until the inhabitants 
were driven to the most horrible shifts to 
prolong their miserable existence. We are j 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



345 



told that an ass's head was sold for eighty 
silver shekels *, and the fourth part of a cab 
of vetches f for five shekels J. In this case 
the extremity of the famine is shown not 
merely by the cost of the articles, but by 
the fact that the flesh of an ass, for which 
such an enormous price was now paid, was 
forbidden by the law §, and could not be 
touched by a Hebrew under ordinary cir- 
cumstances. 

One day, as the king was passing along 
the ramparts, two women importunately de- 
manded justice at his hands. They had be- 
tween them slain, boiled, and eaten the son 
of one of them, with the understanding that 
the son of the other was next to be sacrificed 
to satisfy their wants. But the mother of 
the living son relented, and refused to yield 
him to so horrible a fate. This was the in- 
justice of which the mother of the slaughtered 
child complained, and for which she clamoured 
for redress. When the king heard this shock- 
ing case, he rent his clothes, which gave the 
people present occasion to observe that his 
inner dress was the sackcloth of a mourner. 
He might have remembered that such ca- 
lamities had been threatened, ages back, by 
Moses, as the suitable punishment of such 
iniquities as those into which Israel had 
actually fallen ||. His indignation, however, 
turned against Elisha (who had, perhaps, 
encouraged him to hold out by promises of 
deliverance), and he swore that he should lose 
his head that day, and instantly despatched 
an officer to execute an intention so worthy 
of the son of Jezebel. But the messenger 
was no sooner gone than he relented, and 
went hastily after him, to revoke the order, 
and to excuse himself to Elisha. This mo- 
ment of right feeling was the moment in 

* Equal to 101. of our money. 

\ The fourth part of a cab was less than a pint of our 
measure. In the authorised version of the Bible this is 
rendered " dove's dung," which is indeed the literal trans- 
lation of the Hebrew. There has been much controversy 
as to the meaning, and the general opinion of the com- 
mentators is, that it means some vegetable production, and 
most probably some species of vetch. 

X 12s. 6d. of our money. 

§ No animal food was allowed but that of animals 
which ruminate and divide the hoof. The as$ does neither ; 
and was therefore for food more unclean than even the 
hog, which does divide the hoof although it does not 
i ruminate. 

I B Deut. xxviii. 52—5/. 



which deliverance was announced. " Thus 
saith Jehovah," said the prophet, when the 
king stood in his presence, "to-morrow about 
this time shall a seah^T of fine flour be sold 
for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a 
shekel, in the gate of Samaria." This ap- 
peared so utterly incredible to the courtier 
" on whose hand the king leaned," that he 
said, " Behold, if J ehovah would make win- 
dows in heaven, might this thing be 1 " To 
which the prophet severely retorted, "Behold, 
thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt 
not eat thereof." 

In fact, during the following night, Je- 
hovah caused the Syrians to hear a great 
noise of chariots and horses, which led them 
to conclude that Jehoram had contrived to 
obtain assistance from the king of Egypt and 
other neighbouring princes ; and this infused 
into them such a panic terror, that they 
precipitately raised the siege ; and, in the 
belief that they were pursued by a puissant 
army come to the relief of Israel, they aban- 
doned the camp with all their baggage and 
provisions. Towards the morning, some 
lepers, who, as such, abode without the town, 
made up their minds to go to the camp of 
the Syrians seeking food ; for they concluded 
that it was better to risk death by the Syrian 
sword than to die of famine where they were. 
On reaching the camp they found it deserted, 
and after satisfying their present wants, and 
appropriating to their own use some good 
things from the spoil, they proceeded to bear 
their glad tidings to the city. The king was 
slow to believe them, and suspected the 
whole to be a stratagem of the Syrians. 
Men were therefore mounted on two of the 
five only horses now remaining, and sent to 
make observations. The report with which 
they returned was quite conformable to that 
of the lepers. The people then left the city, 
and hastened to pillage the camp of the 
Syrians, in which provisions were found in 
such abundance that a market was es- 
tablished at the gate of Samaria, where, as 
the prophet had predicted, a seah of wheat 
was sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley 
for the same. The officer who refused to 
believe this prediction was placed by the 

Somewhat more than a peck. 



346 

king to preserve order at the gate ; but so I 
great was the press of the famishing mul- 
titude to obtain corn, that he was thrown 
down and trodden to death. Thus was 
accomplished the other prediction, that he 
should see the truth of the first prophecy 
without enjoying its benefits. 

We know not precisely how long after 
this the seven years of famine terminated. 
Of these years the hospitable Shunemite had 
been warned by Elisha, and had withdrawn 
to a neighbouring country ; on which the 
state assumed the possession of her lands. 
After the famine was over, she returned, and 
came before the king to petition for the 
restoration of the property. At that time 
the servant of Elisha was engaged in giving 
the king an account of the various miracles 
wrought by his master, and when the woman 
appeared, he was relating how her son had 
been restored to life. The relater then said, 
" My lord, king, this is the woman, and 
this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life." 
The king was struck by this coincidence, 
and proceeded to question her on the subject, 
and ended with directing that not only 
should the lands be restored to her but the 
value of their produce during the years of 
her absence. This was a very becoming act, 
and, like several other recorded acts of Je- 
horam, worthy of commendation ; but it is 
not by particular acts, however laudable, that 
the sins of a criminal life can be covered : 
and the fulfilment of the doom pronounced 
upon the house of Ahab was now near at 
hand. 

Jehoram was desirous of pursuing his 
recent advantage over the Syrians to the 
extent of taking from them the city of 
Ramoth in Gilead, which still remained in 
their possession. Fortified by an alliance 
with his nephew Ahaziah, king of Judah, he 
therefore declared war against Hazael, whom 
a revolution, predicted by Elisha, had placed 
upon the throne of Damascene-Syria, in the 
room of Ben-hadad. Ramoth was invested 
by the two kings ; and before that place, 
where Ahab had received his death-wound, 
Jehoram was also wounded by an arrow — 
not mortally, but so seriously that he with- 
drew to Jezreel to be healed, leaving the 



[book iv. 

conduct of the siege to Jehu, the son of 
Nimshi. The king of Judah also returned 
to Jerusalem, but afterwards proceeded to 
J ezreel to visit his wounded relative. 

At this juncture Elisha sent one of the 
sons of the prophet to execute the com- 
mission, long since entrusted to Elijah, of 
anointing Jehu as king of Israel. He arrived 
at the time when the chief officers of the 
army besieging Ramoth were together. He 
called out Jehu, and anointed him in an 
inner chamber, delivering at the same time 
the announcement of his call to the throne 
of Israel, and to be Jehovah's avenger upon 
the house of Ahab. No sooner had he done 
this, than he opened the door and fled. 
Jehu returned to his companions, as if 
nothing had happened. But they had 
noticed the prophetic garb of the person 
who had called him out, and it being the 
fashion of those days to speak contemp- 
tuously of the prophetic calling, they asked, 
" Wherefore came this mad fellow to thee ? " 
Jehu affected some reluctance to tell them ; 
but this made them the more urgent ; and 
when he made the fact known to them, it 
was so agreeable to their own wishes, that 
they instantly tendered him their homage, 
and proclaimed him king by sound of trumpet, 
and with cries of " Jehu is king ! " At his 
desire, measures were taken to prevent this 
intelligence from spreading for the present ; 
in consequence of which king Jehoram and 
king Ahaziah remained at Jezreel, quite 
unsuspicious of what had occurred. But one 
day the watchman announced the distant 
approach of a large party ; and the king of 
Israel sent, successively, two messengers to 
ascertain whether it came with peaceable 
designs or not. But as they did not return, 
and the watchman having in the mean time 
ascertained from his manner of driving his 
chariot, that the principal person was Jehu, 
the two kings went forth themselves to meet 
him. They met in the fatal field of Eaboth. 
"Is it peace, Jehu?" the king inquired of 
the general ; who answered, " What peace, 
so long as the whoredoms [idolatries] of thy 
mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so 
many '? " On hearing which Jehoram cried 
to the king of Judah, " There is treachery. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. VI.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 931 B.C. TO 895 B.C. 



347 



Ahaziah!" and turned his chariot to | 
escape. But Jehu drew his bow with all his 
force, and the arrow which he discharged j 
smote the king between the shoulders, and ! 
went through his heart. Jehu directed the | 
body to be taken from the chariot and left J 
on that ground, reminding Bidkar, his cap- 
tain, to whom he gave this order, that they 
were together in attendance upon Ahab in 
that very place, when the prophet Elijah 
appeared and denounced that doom upon his 
house, and the bloody requital in that spot, 
which was now being accomplished. 

Ahaziah also attempted to escape; but 
Jehu directed some of his followers to pursue 
and smite him in his chariot. They did so, 
and wounded him: but he continued his 
flight till he reached Megiddo, where he 
died of his wounds. His body was removed 
to Jerusalem for sepulture*. 

Jehu entered Jezreel. The news of what 
had happened preceded him : and Jezebel 
tired her head, and painted her eyes, and 
looked out of a window; and this she did, 
we should imagine, not with any view of 
trying the power of her allurements upon 
Jehu — for she was by this time an aged 
woman — but for state, and to manifest to the 
last the pride and royalty of her spirit. As 
Jehu drew nigh, she called to him, "Had 
Zimri peace, who slew his master?" But 
this was the day of vengeance and of punish- 
ment, and not of relentings ; and Jehu 
looked up and cried, " Who is on my side, 
who 1 " On which two or three eunuchs of 
the harem looked out to him. " Throw her 
down ! " was the unflinching command of 
Jehu. So they threw her down, and some of 
her blood was sprinkled upon the wall, and 
upon the horses that trod upon her. After 
this, Jehu went into the palace, and ate and 
drank ; and he then said, " Go, see now this 
cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a 
king's daughter." But it was then found 

* This is the account given in the Book of Kings 
(2 Kings ix. 27 — 29) ; but another account (2 Chrcn. xxii.9) 
says he hid himself in Samaria, where he was discovered 
and put to death. From this difference it may seem that 
some circumstances are omitted, by which the two ac- 
counts might be reconciled. But, as we do not know with 
certainty how to reconcile them, we have given one of the 
accounts only in the text, and have preferred that in Kings 
solely because it is that which Josephus has followed. 



that all the body, except the skull, the feet, 
and the palms of her hands, had been de- 
voured by such ravenous dogs as those by 
which eastern cities are still infested. "This," 
said Jehu, " is the word of Jehovah, which 
he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, 
saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs 
eat the flesh of Jezebel; and the carcass 
of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of 
the field in the portion of Jezreel ; so that 
they shall not say, This is Jezebel." 

Ahab had left not fewer than seventy sons, 
and these were all in Samaria, which was 
not only the metropolis, but one of the 
strongest places in the kingdom ; and Jehu, 
reflecting, probably, on what happened after 
the death of Zimri, — when two kings reigned, 
one, like himself, a military leader upheld 
by the army, whom a portion of the na- 
tion refused to acknowledge, and adhered 
to another, — apprehended that something 
similar might again occur. He therefore 
wrote to the chief persons of Samaria, and 
to those who had the charge of Ahab's 
children, to sound their intentions. He told 
them that they were in a well fortified city, 
with troops, chariots, and arms; and that, 
being thus circumstanced, they had better 
set up one of Ahab's sons for king, and 
fight for him, letting the crown be the prize 
of the conqueror. And this, really, was the 
only course which men faithful and attached 
to the dynasty of Omri could have taken. 
This the chief persons and guardians of the 
princes in Samaria were not, — or not to the 
extent of risking the consequences of civil 
war, and of opposition to Jehu. In fact, 
they were intimidated by his promptitude in 
action, and at the manner in which the two 
kings and J ezebel had been disposed of ; and 
there was something calculated to damp 
their spirits (if they had any) in a message 
which showed that Jehu was prepared for 
the most resolute course they could take. 
They replied, — " We are thy servants, and 
will do all that thou shalt bid us ; we will 
not make any king: do thou that which is 
good in thine eyes." Jehu's reply was 
prompt, and horribly decisive, — "If ye be 
for me, and if ye will hearken unto my voice, 
take ye the heads of the men your master's 



348 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to-morrow 
this time." When this letter arrived the 
seventy princes were instantly decapitated, 
and their heads sent in baskets to Jezreel. 
When Jehu heard of their arrival, he, ac- 
cording to a barbarous eastern custom not 
yet extinct, directed them to be piled up in 
two heaps at the entrance of the city-gate 
until the morning. In the morning he went 
out to the assembled people, and with the 
evident design of pointing out the extent to 
which the house of Ahab wanted any hearty 
adherents, even among those who might be 
supposed most attached to its interests, he 
said, — "Ye be righteous. Behold, I conspired 
against my master, and slew him : but who 
hath slain all these 1 Know now, that there 
shall fall unto the earth nothing of the word 
of Jehovah, which Jehovah spake concerning 
the house of Ahab ; for Jehovah hath done 
that which he spake by his servant Elijah." 

Jehu delayed not to go to Samaria, and in 
his way encountered some of the brothers of 
Ahaziah, the king of Judah, who, ignorant 
of the late occurrences, were on their way to 
visit the sons of Ahab. Regarding their 
connection by blood and friendship with the 
house of Ahab, Jehu considered them in- 
cluded in his commission to exterminate that 
house root and branch. He therefore com- 
manded them to be arrested and slain. 
Their number was forty-two. 

In his further progress Jehu met with 
Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, a pastoral 
religionist held in high esteem by the people, 
and whose influence with them was very 
great. Jehu, with his usual tact, at once 
felt the advantage which the countenance of 



this person might be to his cause. He there- 
fore accosted him, — " Is thine heart right, as 
my heart is with thy heart?" Jehonadab 
answered, " It is." " If it be," said Jehu, 
" give me thine hand." And he gave him 
his hand, and Jehu took him up into his 
chariot, saying, " Come with me and see my 
zeal for Jehovah ! " They thus entered 
Samaria together, where Jehu completed the 
destruction of the house of Ahab by cutting 
off all its remaining members. 

In Samaria Ahab had erected a celebrated 
temple to the idol Baal. On entering the 
town Jehu declared an intention to aggran- 
dise the worship of that god, and render to 
him higher honours than he had yet received 
in Israel. He was therefore determined to 
celebrate a great feast in honour of Baal, to 
which he convoked all the priests, prophets, 
and votaries of that idol. The concourse 
was so great that the temple was filled from 
one end to another ; and while they were in 
the midst of their idolatrous worship, Jehu 
sent in a body of armed men who put them 
all to the sword. The idols, and the imple- 
ments and ornaments of idol worship, were 
then overthrown, broken, or reduced to 
ashes ; and the temple itself was demolished, 
and turned into a common jakes. But the 
worship of Baal was far from being confined 
to Samaria, and Jehu sought for it in all 
quarters of the land, and rooted it out 
wherever it was found. His conduct in this 
matter was so well pleasing to God, that the 
throne of Israel was, by a special promise, 
assured to his posterity unto the fourth 
generation. 



CONTEMPORARY KINGS 
Kings or Israel. 



Ahab . 4 
Ahaziah 

Jehoram or Joram 



Died . 



.c. 931 

. 909 

. 907 

. 895 



Kings of Judah. 
Jehoshaphat .... B.C. 929 



J ehoram or Joram 
Ahaziah 



Died . 



904 
896 
895 



CHAP. VII.] JUDAH, PROM 929 B.C. TO 725 B.C. 349 



CHAPTER VII. 
JUDAH, prom 929 B.C. to 725 B.C. 



Jehoshaphat, the son of Asa, began to reign 
over Judah in the year 929 B.C., being the 
second year of Ahab in Israel. The alliance 
which he formed with Ahab has brought 
him forward, in the preceding chapter, suf- 
ficiently to intimate to the reader the ex- 
cellent character which he bore. He indeed 
takes rank among the most faithful, and 
therefore most illustrious and wise of the 
Hebrew kings. Direct idolatry had been put 
down by his father, and the first acts of his 
own reign were to root out the remoter 
incentives thereto and instruments thereof. 
He destroyed the high places and the groves 
which his father had spared. Other kings 
before him had been satisfied with external 
operations ; but to his enlightened mind it 
appeared that effects more deep and per- 
manent might be secured by acting upon 
the inner sense of the people, by instructing 
them fully in the principles and distinguish- 
ing privileges of their theocratical system, 
and by rendering those principles operative, 
as the standards of public and judicial 
action, throughout the land. The land had 
already been purged, as by fire, from the 
noxious weeds by which it had been over- 
grown ; and now the king made it his 
business to occupy the cleared soil with corn 
— the staff of life,— and with fruits "pleasant 
to the eye, and good for food." 

To these ends the king sent out a number 
of "princes," whose rank and influence se- 
cured attention and respect to the priests 
and Levites who were with them to instruct 
the people. They had with them copies of 
the law : and, in their several bands, visited 
all the towns of the country, — thus bearing 
instruction to the very doors of a people who 
had become too indolent or too indifferent 
themselves to seek for it. So earnest was 
the king in this object, that he went himself 
throughout the land to see that his orders 
were duly executed. 

The attention of this able king was also 



directed to the reform of abuses in other 
departments of the state, and to the cul- 
tivation of the financial and military re- 
sources of his kingdom. The people, rendered 
happy by his cares, grew prosperous, and 
increased in numbers ; in the same degree 
the real power of the government was 
strengthened, and was such as inspired the 
people with confidence, and their enemies 
with fear. Edom continued firm in its obe- 
dience, Philistia regularly remitted its pre- 
sents and tribute-silver, and several of the 
Arabian tribes sought his favour, or acknow- 
ledged his power, by large yearly tributes of 
sheep and goats from their flocks. The men 
enrolled as fit to bear arms, and liable to be 
called into action, were not less than 1,160,000, 
which is not far short of the number in the 
united kingdom in the time of David*. Of 
these a certain proportion were kept in 
service. The best of the troops were sta- 
tioned at Jerusalem, and the remainder 
distributed into the fortresses and walled 
towns ; and a strong force was concentrated 
on the northern frontier, especially in those 
lands of Ephraim which Asa had taken from 
Baasha. New fortresses were constructed in 
different parts of the country, and were well 
garrisoned and supplied with all the mu- 
nitions of war. 

The capital error of this monarch, the 
alliance he contracted with Ahab in the 
thirteenth year of his reign, has already 
been noticed in the preceding chapter, as 
well as the part he took in the battle of 
Ramoth Gilead, in which Ahab was slain, 
but his own life was preserved, notwith- 
standing the very imminent danger into 
which he had fallen. On his return to 
Jerusalem after this escape, the Divine dis- 
satisfaction at his conduct was announced 
to him by the prophet Jehu. 

After this he engaged himself in his 
former peaceful and honourable under- 

* 2 Sam. xxiv. 19. 



350 




[Fortress on the Nile.] 
takings ; and gave particular attention to 
the administration of justice in his do- 
minions. He established a supreme tribunal 
(of appeal probably) at Jerusalem, and placed 
judges in all the principal cities of the 
country. This great improvement relieved 
the king from the fatigue and great at- 
tention which the exercise of the judicial 
functions of royalty had exacted from the 
earlier kings, while it secured to the suitors 
more prompt attention than they could by 
any other means receive. The king was 
very sensible of the importance of this step ; 
and, in his anxiety that it should work well, 
gave an admirable charge to the judges ; the 
force of which can only be well appreciated 
by those who perceive that the counteracting 
evils which he feared were precisely those 
by which the administration of justice in the 
East is at this day corrupted and disgraced. 
— " Take heed what ye do : for ye judge not 
for man, but for Jehovah, who is with you in 
the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear 
of Jehovah be upon you ; take heed and do 
it: for there is no iniquity with Jehovah 
our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking 
of gifts." This was addressed to the judges 
appointed to the cities. In the address to 
the judges of the supreme tribunal at Jeru- 
salem, it is not supposed, by any implication, 
that they could be partial or corrupt ; and 
they are only reminded of the duty of judging 
according to the Divine law, the causes that 
came before them. This tribunal was com- 
posed of the most distinguished men among 
the priests, the Levites, and the family chiefs. 
In matters pertaining to religion, this tribunal 
was presided over by the high-priest Amariah, 
but in civil matters, or those in which the 
crown was interested, by Zebadiah, " the 



[book IV. 

ruler," or hereditary chief, of the tribe of 
Judah, — an interesting indication that the 
forms of the patriarchal were not, even yet, 
entirely lost in those of the regal govern- 
ment. 

About the same time the king made 
another tour through his dominions, from 
Beersheba in the south, to Mount Ephraim 
in the north, seeking to bring back the 
I people more entirely "unto Jehovah the God 
of their fathers." In the northern districts 
which had been recovered or taken from 
Israel, the high places of the Ephraimites 
were not taken away, because they had not 
as yet " prepared their hearts unto the God 
of their fathers," as had the Judahites, 
whose high places had been taken away at 
the beginning of this reign. 

The unfortunate expedition with Ahab 
against Ramoth Gilead being unsuccessful, 
tended much to lower Jehoshaphat in the 
estimation of the neighbouring nations ; and 
thus the alliance with the king of Israel 
brought its own punishment. The Ammo- 
nites and Moabites, who had been brought 
into a state of subjection by David, now 
began to conceive hopes of deliverance from 
the yoke under which they lay. It was their 
policy, however, not in the first instance to 
revolt from the kingdom to which they were 
immediately subject — that of Israel, but first 
to try their strength against the lesser king- 
dom of Judah. They therefore invaded that 
country from the south, by the way of Edom, 
supported by some Arabian hordes, which 
they had engaged in their cause, and who 
indeed are seldom loth to engage in any 
cause by which good prospects of spoil are 
offered. The expedition assumed the cha- 
racter of an Arabian invasion, and, as such, 
was so expeditious that the invaders had 
rounded the southern extremity of the Dead 
Sea, and came to a halt in the famous valley 
of Engedi, before Jehoshaphat had the least 
intimation of their design. Taken thus by 
surprise, he was much alarmed in the first 
instance ; but by throwing himself unre- 
servedly upon the protection and help of the 
Divine king, he ensured the safety of his 
kingdom, and took the most becoming step 
which it was possible that a king of the 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



; CHAP. VII.] 

chosen nation could take. He proclaimed a 
geueral fast throughout Judah, and the 
people gathered together from all quarters 
to Jerusalem, and stood there in and around 
the temple, to cry to God for help. And he 
heard them : for the spirit of prophecy fell 
upon one of the Levites, named Jabaziel, 
and in the name of Jehovah he directed 
that they should march to meet the enemy, 
whose station he indicated, not to fight, but 
to witness their extirpation and to seize the 
spoil. As they went forth early in the 
morning towards the wilderness of Tekoah, 
Jehoshaphat exerted himself to keep up the 
confidence of the people in the sufficiency of 
the Divine protection ; and as they pro- 
ceeded, he directed that the Levitical singers 
should march in front, and in " the beauty 
of holiness " (or in the same habits, and after 
the same manner as in the temple-service), 
should sing the praises of God, saying, 
" Praise Jehovah ! for his mercy endureth 
for ever." Surely never, from the beginning 
of the world, was there such a march as this 
against an army of hostile invaders. The 
event was such as the prophet had fore- 
shown. It seems that the children of Lot 
had quarrelled and fought with their Ara- 
bian allies ; and when they had succeeded in 
destroying them, they turned their arms 
against each other, and fought with unex- 
tinguishable fury until none remained alive 
on the battle-field. So that when the He- 
brews arrived at the place which the prophet 
had indicated, many a beating heart among 
them was relieved, and all were inconceiv- 
ably astonished, to see the wilderness covered 
with the bodies of the slain — not one had 
escaped. The Judahites were three days in 
collecting an immense spoil of precious 
metals and stones, and valuable arms and 
raiment ; and in the end it was found that 
| more was collected than could be taken away, 
i On the fourth day they returned home to 
' Jerusalem, before entering which they held 
i a solemn thanksgiving in the valley of 
Shaveh, or the King's Dale, hence called the 
Valley of Berachah (blessing), and also the 
valley of Jehoshaphat. After this they en- 
tered the city in triumphal procession, with 
1 music and with singing. The neighbouring 



351 

! nations rightly ascribed this signal deliver- 
ance to the God of the Hebrews ; and were 
for some time inspired with a salutary fear 
of molesting a people so highly favoured. 

The next undertaking of Jehoshaphat was 
an attempt to revive the ancient traffic of 
Solomon, by the Red Sea, to the region of 
gold. For this purpose he built a navy at 
his port of Ezion-geber, at the head of the 
Elanitic Gulf. But, in an evil day, he con- 
sented to allow Ahaziah, the king of Israel, 
to take part in the enterprise, in consequence 
of which, as a prophet forewarned him, his 
ships were wrecked soon after they left the 
port. Another expedition was proposed by 
the king of Israel: but Jehoshaphat declined, 
and appears to have relinquished all further 
designs of this nature. Josephus informs us 
that the ships which had been built were 
too large and unwieldy; and we may infer 
that Jehoshaphat discovered that he could 
not accomplish an enterprise of this nature 
in the want of such skilful shipwrights 
and able mariners as those with which the 
Phoenicians had constructed and manned the 
ships of Solomon. 

One of the last public acts of Jehoshaphat's 
reign was that of taking part with Jehoram, 
king of Israel, in an expedition against the 
Moabites, who had revolted after the death of 
Ahab. Jehoshaphat was probably the more 
induced to lend his assistance by the con- 
sideration of the recent invasion of his own 
dominions by the same people. The circum- 
stances and result of this expedition have 
been related in the preceding chapter. The 
success which was granted to it is entirely 
ascribed to the Divine favour towards the 
king of Judah. 

Soon after this Jehoshaphat " slept with 
his fathers," after he had lived sixty years, 
and reigned twenty-five. 

His eldest son, Jehoram, ascended the 
throne of Judah in the year 904 B.C., in the 
thirty-second year of his own age, and in the 
third year of the reign of his namesake and 
relative, Jehoram, the son of Ahab, in Israel. 
This, it will be remembered, was the prince 
who was married to Athaliah, the daughter 
of Ahab and Jezebel. The evil effects of 



JUDAH, FROM 929 B.C. TO 725 B.C. 



j 352 

this connection began now very manifestly 
to appear, and preponderated over the good 
example which the reign of Jehoshaphat 
had offered. In fact, Athaliah proved her 
descent by rivalling her mother, Jezebel, in 
idolatry, in pride, and in the part she took in 
public affairs after the death of Jehoshaphat. 
And, to complete the resemblance, she ap- 
pears to have rendered her husband the mere 
instrument of her will and purposes, quite 
as effectually as Jezebel rendered Ahab. 

It was undoubtedly through her influence 
that the first act of Jehoram's reign was to 
destroy his six brothers, whom Jehoshaphat 
had amply provided for, and stationed (as 
governors, probably) in as many fenced cities 
of Judah. vVith them perished several of 
the first persons in the state, who had en- 
joyed the confidence of the late king, and 
had been active in promoting his laudable 
designs. This evidence of her power re- 
doubled the audacity of the proud queen ; 
and soon after, idolatry, which had been 
banished from Judah during the two pre- 
ceding reigns, was restored, by public autho- 
rity, to honour; and the sedulous endeavours 
made in the two former reigns to reform the 
religion and morals of the people gave place 
to the efforts of new men to corrupt and 
ruin all. High places, similar to those in 
Israel, again appeared upon the hills of 
Judah ; and the people were seduced and 
urged into idolatry and its concomitant 
abominations. 

For these things heavy calamities were 
denounced against Jehoram, early in his 
reign, by the prophet Elisha* in a letter: 
and thus did that great prophet take cog- 
nizance of the affairs of Judah also. The 
evils that he threatened followed soon. 

The king of Edom, who assisted the kings 
of Judah and Israel in the war against Moab, 
had, according to Josephus, been slain by 
the revolted subjects, and the new sovereign 
desired to signalise his accession, and to pro- 
pitiate his subjects, by freeing them from the 
tribute to which his father had submitted. 
This essay was not at first successful ; but 

* The "Masorete text here reads Elijah (2 Chron. xxi. 12) 
instead of Elisha.- for Elijah had been translated in the 
time of Jehoshaphat. 2 Kings, iii. 11. 



[book IV 

although once defeated by Jehoram, who 
still had his father's army under his com- 
mand, the Edomites succeeded in throwing 
the yoke of Judah from off their necks, 
according to the prophecy of Isaac to the 
founder of that nation f. Emboldened by 
this, the Philistines also rebelled, and, as- 
sisted by the Arabs who bordered on the 
Cushites, they invaded Judah, plundered 
and ravaged the whole country, and even 
Jerusalem and the royal palace. They led 
away into slavery all the women of the 
king's harem, except Athaliah, who was 
spared in anger, and made captive all the 
royal princes, except Ahaziah, otherwise 
called Jehoahaz, the youngest of them all. 
To consummate all, the king himself was 
smitten with an incurable disease in the 
bowels, from which he suffered for two years 
the most horrible torments, and at last, after 
a reign of eight years, died without being 
regretted. The voice of the people denied 
to his remains the honours of a royal burial 
and a place in the sepulchre of the kings. 

Ahaziah, his youngest son, was forty-two 
years old when he succeeded his father. He 
reigned only one year ; for, following the evil 
counsels of his mother and the house of Ahab, 
he foolishly joined Jehoram of Israel in the 
war against Hazael king of Syria, the result 
of which, with his death, inflicted by Jehu, 
has been recorded in the preceding chapter. 

Not Jehu in Israel thirsted more after the 
blood of Ahab's house, than did Athaliah, 
in Judah, for the blood of her own children. 
She had long been the virtual possessor of 
the supreme power in Judah ; but now she 
disdained an authority so precarious and in- 
direct, and would reign alone. As even the 
uio.^t wicked persons seldom shed blood from 
absolute wantonness of cruelty, it may be 
considered that her spirit may have been 
rendered unusually savage at this time by 
the sanguinary proceedings of Jehu in Israel 
against the house to which she herself be- 

t To Esau Jsa-c said,—" Thou shalt serve thy brother; 
and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the domi- 
nion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." 
Gen. xxvii. 40. See also p. 61 of this 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. VII.] 



JUDAH, FKOM 929 



B.C. TO 725 B.C. 



353 



longed, and in which she had lost, at one 
fell swoop, a mother, a brother, and a son, 
[ with many other of her near relatives. It 
must also have appeared to her that the sort 
of authority she had hitherto exercised, first 
as queen-consort and then as queen-mother, 
was now in very great danger; as it might 
be expected that whichever of her grandsons 
succeeded to the throne, he would prefer the 
counsels and guidance of his mother to her 
own. Here then were two powerful motives, 
— dread of losing her power, and jealousy 
of being superseded by another woman, — 
bringing her to the atrocious resolution of 
destroying all the children of her own son 
Ahaziah. She little considered that by this 
she was fulfilling a part of the mission 
against the house of Ahab which Jehu 
himself could not execute ; for through 
herself the taint of Ahab's blood had been 
given to the house of David. Her fell 
purpose was promptly executed. All her 
grandsons were slain in one day, with the 
exception of Joash, an infant, who was stolen 
away by his aunt Jehoshebad, the wife of 
the high-priest Jehoiada and daughter of 
the late king Ahaziah, and hidden with his 
nurse in one of the chambers of the temple. 
Thus, in the providence of God, the royal 
line of the house of David was preserved 
from utter extinction. No retreat could 
have been more secure than that which was 
chosen for the infant prince ; for not only 
were the apartments of the temple under 
the sole direction of the priests, but no others 
had access to the innermost parts of it ; and 
Athaliah had put herself out of the way of 
obtaining information of the fact, by her 
entire neglect of the temple and the insti- 
tutions connected with it. And although 
she did not, indeed could not, actually put 
down the temple-worship, her preference and 
favour was given to the temple of Baal ; and 
his high-priest, Mattan, was upheld by her 
as of equal rank and importance with the 
high-priest of Jehovah. 

Now, although the Judahites were but too 
prone to fall into idolatry, the good effects 
of the reforms of Asa and Jehoshaphat, and 
of the principles which the latter had been 
so careful to inculcate, did not so soon eva- 



porate as to dispose the people generally 
to approve or concur in the rapid and de- 
cisive measures which Athaliah had taken 
in establishing the worship of Baal ; and 
when to this was added their natural ab- 
horrence of the barbarous massacre which 
rooted her throne in blood, and their dislike, 
in common with all orientals, to the public 
rule of a woman, we have a sufficient ex- 
planation of the fact that the public feel- 
ing was not with queen Athaliah, and that, 
indeed, her rule was regarded with such dis- 
gust as disposed the people to hail with joy 
the advent of their hidden king. 

Joash remained six years concealed in the 
secret chambers of the temple, his existence 
even, much more his presence there, being 
unknown and unsuspected by Athaliah and 
others, as it was supposed he had perished 
in the slaughter of his father's sons. In the 
seventh year the high-priest Jehoiada judged 
that the fit time had arrived for the disclosure. 
He therefore made known the secret to some 
of the chiefs and military commanders on 
whom he could depend, and received from 
them the promise to concur in the bold act 
of proclaiming and crowning the rightful 
king. Joash was now only seven years of 
age; but good reaso'i was seen to prefer the 
regency of such a n an as Jehoiada to the 
reign of such a woman as Athaliah. The 
persons whom Jehoiada had admitted to his 
confidence went about the country gaming 
over the paternal chiefs, and inducing them, 
as well as the Levites not on duty, to repair 
to Jerusalem. When all the adherents thus 
acquired had come to the metropolis, the 
high-priest concerted with them the plan of 
operations. According to this it was deter- 
mined that the partisans of the young prince 
should be divided into three bodies, one of 
which was to guard the prince in the temple, 
the second to keep all the avenues, and the 
third was placed at the gate leading to the 
royal palace. The people were to be admitted 
as usual to the outer courts. Then the ar- 
mories of the temple were opened, and the 
spears, bucklers, and shields of king David 
were distributed to these parties, as well as 
to the Levites, who were to form an impene- 
trable barrier around the king during the 



A A 



354 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



ceremony. When all was disposed in this 
order, the high-priest appeared, leading by 
the hand the last scion of the royal house of 
David. He placed him by the pillar where 
the kings were usually stationed, and having 
anointed him with the sacred oil, he placed 
the crown upon his head, arrayed him in 
royal robes, and gave into his hands the book 
of the law, on which the usual oaths were 
administered to him. He was then seated 
on a throne which had been provided, in 
doing which he was hailed and recognised 
by the acclamations of " God save the king." 

By this time Athaliah had observed some 
indications of an extraordinary movement 
in the temple ; and when these rejoicing 
clamours broke upon her ear, she hastened 
thither, and penetrated even to the court of 
the priests, where the sight met her view 
of the enthroned boy, crowned, and royally 
arrayed, while the hereditary chiefs, the 
military commanders and the Levites, stood 
at their several stations as in attendance on 
their king, — the latter, as was their wont 
in the temple, blowing their trumpets, and 
playing on their various instruments of 
music. No sooner did Athaliah behold this, 
than she rent her clothes, crying, " Treason ! 
treason!" Jehoiada fearing that the guards 
would kill her on the spot, and thus pollute 
the holy place with human blood, which w r as 
most abhorrent to God, directed them to take 
her outside the temple courts, and there she 
was put to death. The king was then con- 
ducted with great pomp to the palace, escorted 
by all his guard, and there took possession of 
the throne of his fathers. 

Jehoiada, without any formal appoint- 
ment, appears to have been recognised, with 
one consent, as the guardian of the king and 
regent of the kingdom. He availed himself 
of the favourable dispositions which now ex- 
isted, to induce the people to renew their 
ancient covenant with Jehovah. This pre- 
caution had become necessary from the long 
continuance of an idolatrous government. 
Actuated by the impulse thus received and 
the enthusiasm thus excited, and led by the 
priests and Levites of Jehovah, the people 
proceeded once more to extirpate the idola- 
tries of Baal. They hastened to his temple, 



where they slew the high-priest Mattan be- 
fore the altars, and then pulled the whole 
fabric to the ground. And not only at 
Jerusalem, but everywhere throughout the 
land, the temples, altars and monuments of 
Baal were utterly destroyed. 

Jehoiada, being now at the head of affairs, 
both religious and civil, applied himself with 
great diligence in bringing into an orderly 
and efficient condition the administrations 
of both the court and temple. Those who 
had signalised their zeal in the restoration of 
the king, or were otherwise distinguished for 
their abilities, were appointed to high posts 
in the state ; while the services of the 
temple were brought back to the models of 
David and Solomon. The glory of restoring 
the fabric of the temple he reserved for the 
king, who, accordingly, in the twenty-third 
year of his reign, thoroughly repaired that 
famous structure, after it had been built 
nearly one hundred and sixty years ; and 
made numerous vessels of gold and silver 
for the sacred services, and presented burnt- 
offerings continually during the lifetime of 
Jehoiada, who died at the great age of one 
hundred and thirty-seven years. He was 
honoured with a sepulchre among the kings 
of the family of David, "because he had done 
good in Israel." 

We may estimate the merits of Jehoiada's 
administration from the evil consequences 
that followed his death. It then appeared 
that the good qualities, which the king had 
seemed to manifest, were the effects rather 
of the right counsels under which he had 
acted, than of any solid principles of good. 
As we have before seen stronger and older 
men than Joash yielding to the witcheries 
of idolatry, which seem so strange to us, we 
are the less surprised at the fall of this king. 
It now appeared what deep root idolatry had 
taken in the land during the years of its 
predominance under Jehoram, Ahaziah, and 
Athaliah: and the men of station who had 
imbibed or had been brought up in its prin- 
ciples now reared themselves on high, as soon 
as the repressive power of God's high-priest 
was withdrawn. They repaired to the royal 
court, and by their attentions and flatteries 
so won upon the king that he was at length 



CHAP. VII.] JUDAH, FROM 929 B.C. TO 725 B.C. 355 



induced to give first his tolerance, and then 
his sanction, to the rank idolatries by which 
the two kingdoms had often been brought 
very low. Against this, Zechariah, the son 
of the late high-priest and a near relation to 
the king, raised his voice, and predicted the 
national calamities which would too surely 
follow ; on which the people rose upon him, 
and, having received a consenting intima- 
tion from the king, stoned him to death in 
the very court of the temple. Thus did 
Joash repay the deep obligations, for his life 
and throne, which he owed to the house of 
Jehoiada. u The Lord look upon it, and re- 
quire it !" was the prayer of the dying martyr. 
And He did require it. That very year, 
Hazael of Syria, who was then in possession 
of Gilead, advanced against Jerusalem, and 
although his force was but small, defeated 
a large army which opposed him, and en- 
tered the city, from which he returned with 
abundant plunder to his own country. The 
chiefs who had seduced Joash were slain in 
the bat ile; and the king himself, who had 
been grievously wounded, was soon after 
murdered by his own servants ; and the 
public voice refused the honours of a royal 
burial to his remains. He reigned forty 
years. 

J oash was succeeded on the throne by his 
son Amaziah, then twenty-five years of age. 
The first act of his reign was to punish the 
murderers of his father : but it is mentioned 
that he respected the law of Moses by not 
including their children in their doom ; and 
this seems to show that a contrary practice 
had previously prevailed. 

About the twelfth year of his reign, Amaziah 
took measures for reducing to their former 
subjection the Edomites, who had revolted in 
the time of Jehoram. Kot satisfied with the 
strength he could raise in his own kingdom, 
the king of Judah hired a hundred thousand 
auxiliaries out of Israel for a hundred talents 
of silver*. But these were tainted with 
idolatry ; on which account a prophet was 
commissioned to exhort Amaziah to forego 
their assistance, and dismiss them. By a 
memorable act of faith, the king at once 
yielded to this hard demand, and sent home 

* About 37,500Z. 



the Israelites, for whose services he had al- 
ready paid. He then gained a decisive vic- 
tory over the Edomites in the Salt Valley, 
at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. 
Ten thousand of the Edomites fell ; and ten 
thousand more were cast down from the cliffs 
of their native mountains, and dashed in 
pieces. 

This victory was the ruin of Amaziah, 
whose conduct had been hitherto praise- 
worthy. The idols of Edom, which he 
brought home among the spoil, proved a 
snare to him ; and, in the end he fell to 
the worship of " the gods which could not 
deliver their own people :" for which he was, 
without effect, upbraided by a prophet, and 
threatened with destructions from God. 

The Israelites whom the king of Judah 
had dismissed from his army were filled with 
resentment at the indignity cast upon them; 
and probably disappointed in their hope of a 
share in the spoils of Edom. To testify their 
resentment, and to obtain compensation, they 
smote and plundered several of the towns of 
Judah, on their homeward march, and de- 
stroyed many of the inhabitants. It was 
probably on this account that Amaziah, 
elated by his victory over the Edomites, 
determined to make war upon Israel. It 
is singular that, instead of commencing, 
as usual, by some aggressive movement or 
overt act of warfare, Amaziah sent a formal 
challenge to the king of Israel, inviting a 
pitched battle, in the phrase, "Come, and let 
us look one another in the face." The truly 
Oriental answer of Joash seemed designed to 
dissuade him from this undertaking, but was 
conceived in terms not well calculated to ac- 
complish the object: "The thistle that was 
in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in 
Lebanon, saying, 1 Give thy daughter to my 
son to wife:' and there passed by a wild 
beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down 
the thistle. Thou sayest, £ Lo ! thou hast 
smitten the Edomites,' and thine heart lifteth 
thee up to boast. Abide now at home ; why 
shouldst thou meddle to thine hurt, so that 
thou shouldst fall, even thou, and Judah with 
thee ? " 

But Amaziah was not to be thus deterred. 
The two kings met in battle. Amaziah was 



356 



THE BIBLE HISTOEY. 



[book IV, 



defeated and taken prisoner, and his army 
routed at Beth-shemesh. Joash then pur- 
sued his triumphant march to Jerusalem, 
which he plundered, and spared not to lay 
his hands upon the sacred things of the 
Temple. He also broke down four hundred 
cubits of the city wall. He, however, re- 
stored Amaziah to his throne, but took 
hostages with him on his return to Samaria. 

The life of Amaziah ended in a conspiracy, 
which may have been induced by the dis- 
grace which he had brought upon the nation. 
This conspiracy was discovered by him, and 
he hastened to the fortified town of Lachish. 
But he was pursued and slain by the con- 
spirators, who brought back his body "upon 
horses " to Jerusalem, where a place in the 
sepulchres of his fathers was not denied him. 
He reigned twenty-nine years. B.C. 809. 

Uzziah, otherwise called Azariah, was only 
five years - old when his father was slain. 
The Judahites were in no haste to tender 
their allegiance to an infant. They waited 
until he was sixteen years of age, and he 
was then formally called to the throne*. 
Much favourable influence upon the cha- 
racter of Uzziah is attributed to the early 
instruction and subsequent influence of the 
wise and holy Zechariahf. His adhesion to 
the principles of the theocracy secured him 
prosperity and honour. He paid equal at- 
tention to the arts of peace and of war ; and 
he throve in all the undertakings, whether 
of war or peace, to which he put his hand. 
In the arts which belong to both, he en- 
couraged and promoted various improve- 
ments ; and it may be pardoned in an 
oriental king, if, in his improvements and 
undertakings, his own interest and glory 
was the inciting motive. It is rare, and 
in fact difficult, for an oriental monarch 
(considering the institutions by which he is 

* "This naturally accounts for the length of the inter- 
regnum. (2 Kings xv. 1, 2; 2 Chron. xxvi. 1.) Amaziah 
was slain fifteen years current after the death of Jehoash, 
king of Israel (2 Kings xiv. 17) > or fourteen years complete 
from the accession of Jeroboam II. his son ; and Azariah, 
or Uzziah, did not begin to reign till the twenty-fifth of 
Jeroboam (according to the foregoing correction, instead 
of the twentv-seventh year), 2 Kings xv. 1, -which gives 
the length of the interregnum eleven years complete."— 
Hales. 

t No one will, of course, confound this person with the 
prophet of the Same name, who lived long after. 



surrounded, and the ideas which press upon 
him) to contemplate the interests of his 
people otherwise than as a contingent effect 
of undertakings in which his own interests 
and glory are the 'primary motives. So 
Uzziah performed the good deed of build- 
ing towers and digging wells in the desert ; 
but the reason immediately follows : — " For 
he had much cattle both in the low coun- 
tries and in the plains." He also "loved 
husbandry;" and, accordingly, u he had 
husbandmen also, and vine-dressers in the 
mountains, and in Carmel." These were 
laudable things; for the people could not 
but be benefited by them, even though their 
benefit were less the immediate intention 
than the indirect effect. 

The same may even less doubtfully be said 
of this king's military organizations and im- 
provements. New fortifications were built 
and the old repaired. At Jerusalem not only 
were the injuries which the walls had sus- 
tained repaired, but the gates and angles 
were strengthened with towers; and on these 
were mounted engines invented by skilful 
men, and made under the king's encourage- 
ment and direction, for the purpose of dis- 
charging arrows and great stones. It may 
be doubtful whether these engines were in- 
vented by Hebrew engineers, or successfully 
copied by them from foreigners. We have 
certainly no opinion that the Hebrews had 
much genius for mechanical invention ; but 
we are bound to say the antiquities of Egypt, 
in the numerous warlike scenes which they 
represent, do not, as far as we know, contain 
any examples of projectile engines : and it 
must be admitted that in the art of war many 
ingenious devices originate with nations not 
otherwise distinguished for their inventive 
faculties. 

Uzziah provided ample stores of weapons 
and armour — spears, shields, helmets, breast- 
plates, bows, and stone-slings — for the nu- 
merous body which he enrolled as ready to 
be called into action, and which consisted of 
not less than 307,500 men under 2600 pa- 
ternal chiefs. This formed a sort, of militia, 
divided into bands, liable to be called into 
actual service by rotation, according to the 
number required. 



CHAP. "VII.] 

With this force, and under these arrange- 
ments, Uzziah was enabled to establish and 
extend his power. He recovered possession 
of the port of Elath on the Red Sea; he 
got possession of the principal Philistine 
towns, Gath, Jabneh, and Ashdod. The Arab 
hordes on the borders were subdued; and the 
Ammonites were reduced to tribute. 

Elated by all this prosperity, the king of 
Judah saw not why he should be precluded 
from a distinction which other monarchs 
enjoyed, and which his neighbour of Israel 
probably exercised — that of officiating on 
particular occasions at the incense-altar, as 
high-priest. He made the attempt. He 
went into the holy place, which none but 
the priests might lawfully enter, to offer 
incense on the altar there ; but was followed 
by the high-priest, Azariah, and by eighty 
other priests, who opposed his design, and 
warned him of his trespass. The king, made 
wrathful by this opposition, seized the censer 
to offer incense ; but in that moment he was 
smitten with leprosy, the marks of which 
appeared visibly on his forehead. On per- 
ceiving this, the priests thrust him forth as 
a pollution; nay, confounded and conscience- 
smitten, he hastened to leave the place*. 
From that day he was obliged to live apart 
as a leper, and his son Jotham administered 
the affairs of the government in his father's 
name. The year in which this happened is 
not well determined ; but the whole duration 
of his reign was fifty-two years. This is the 
longest reign of any king of Judah, with the 
sole exception of Manasseh. Isaiah received 
his appointment to the prophetic office in 
the year that king Uzziah died [b.c. 757]; 
and Amos, Hosea, and probably Joel, began 
to prophesy in his reign. 

The death of Uzziah left the kingdom 
under the same actual ruler, but exchanged 
his regency for the sovereignty. Jotham 
was twenty-five years old when he began to 
reign. He was a good and prosperous prince, 
and during the sixteen years of his separate 
reign continued the improvements and plans 

* To this prodigy Josephus adds an earthquake, which, 
he says, shook the earth with such violence that the roof 
of the temple vras rent ; and one half of a mountain on 
the west of Jerusalem fell, or rather slipped, into the val- 
ley helow, covering the royal gardens. 



357 | 

of his father. He built several fortresses, and 
confirmed the subjection of the Ammonites 
to his sceptre. It was in this reign t that 
the city of Rome was founded, with the 
destinies of which the Hebrews were in the 
end to be so intimately connected. Jotham 
died in the year b.c. 741. 

Ahaz succeeded Jotham when he was 
twenty years of age. He proved the most 
corrupt monarch that the house of David 
had as yet produced. He respected neither 
J ehovah, the law, nor the prophets ; he 
broke through all the salutary restraints 
which law and usage imposed upon the 
Hebrew kings, and regarded nothing but his 
own depraved inclinations. He introduced 
the Syrian idolatry into Jerusalem, erected 
altars to the Syrian gods, altered the temple 
in many respects, according to the Syrian 
model, and finally caused it to be entirely 
shut up. For these things, adversities and 
punishments soon came upon him. 

Pekah king of Israel, and Rezin king of 
Syria, had formed an alliance against Judah 
in the last year of Jotham, which began to 
take effect as soon as Ahaz had evinced the 
unworthiness of his character. The object 
of this alliance appears to have been no less 
than to dethrone the house of David, and to 
make "the son of Tabeal" king in the room 
of AhazJ. 

In this war Elath was taken from Judah 
by the king of Syria, who restored it to the 
Edomites. He also defeated Ahaz in battle, 
and carried away large numbers of his sub- 
jects as captives to Damascus. Pekah on 
his part was equally successful. He slew in 
one day 120,000 men of Judah, and carried 
away captives not fewer than 200,000 women 
and children, together with much spoil, to 
Samaria. But on his arrival there he was 
met by the prophet Obed, and by some of 
the chiefs of Ephraim. The former awakened 
the king's apprehensions for the consequences 
of the Divine anger on account of the evil 

t B.C. 748, or according to others, 750 or 752, all which 
dates fell in this reign. 

± Isa. vii. 5.6. Of this "son of Tabeal" nothing is 
known, although much has been conjectured. Some make 
it to be Pekah himself, but the interpretation on which it 
is founded is not very sound, although the thing itself 
might not be unlikely. 



JUDAH, FKOM 929 B.C. TO 725 B.C. 



358 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



already committed against the house of 
Judah, and exhorted him not to add to this 
evil and to their danger, by reducing the 
women and children of that kindred state 
to bondage. The prophet was vigorously 
seconded by the chiefs, who positively de- 
clared to the troops, "ye shall not bring in 
the captives hither : for whereas we have 
offended against Jehovah already, ye intend 
to add more to our sins and to our trespass : 
for our trespass is great, and there is fierce 
wrath against Israel." On hearing this the 
warriors abandoned their captives, and left 
them in the hands of the chiefs, who, with 
the concurrence and help of the people, 
"took the captives, and with the spoil clothed 
all that were naked among them, and arrayed 
them, and shod them, and gave them to eat 
and to drink, and anointed them, and carried 
all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought 
them to Jericho, the city of palm-trees, to 
their brethren." This beautiful incident 
comes over our sense as might some strain 
of soft and happy music amidst the bray of 
trumpets and the alarms of war. It also 
proves that, even in the worst of times, a 
righteous few were found, even in Israel, 
who honoured the God of their fathers and 
stood in dread of his judgments. 

The narrative in Isaiah records an unsuc- 
cessful attempt of the confederates against 
Jerusalem, the proper place of which in the 
history is not easily found, but which may 
appear to have been posterior to the occur- 
rences which have been related. At the 
same time, the Edomites and the Philistines 
invaded the south of Judah, and took pos- 
session of several cities of the low country, 
with their villages, and occupied them. 
Thus harassed on every hand, the besotted 
king rejected a token of deliverance which 
Isaiah was commissioned to offer him from 
God, under the pretext that he "would not 
tempt Jehovah," but in reality, because he 
had already chosen another alternative. 
This was to induce Tiglath-Pileser*, the 

* Or Tiglath pul-assur, "the tiger lord of Assyria." 



king of Assyria, to make a diversion in his 
favour, by invading the kingdoms of Syria 
and Israel. 

Pul, the father of this king, was the first 
Assyrian monarch who took part in the affairs 
of the West. By invading Israel, he had 
made known the power of that monarchy to 
Syria and Palestine. Tiglath-Pileser, for his 
own objects, lent a willing ear to the suite 
of Ahaz, who professed himself his vassal, 
and sent him a subsidy of all the sacred 
and royal treasures. He marched an army 
westward, defeated and slew Rezin the king 
of Syria, took Damascus, and sent the in- 
habitants away into Assyria, — thus putting 
an end to that monarchy of Damascene-Syria, 
which has so often come under our notice. 
At the same time he carried away the tribes 
beyond Jordan — Reuben, Gad, and half 
Manasseh — captives to Media, where they 
were planted in Halah, Habor, and on the 
river Gozan ; and to them he added the 
other half of the tribe of Manasseh which 
was seated in Galilee. 

Syria, with the countries of Gilead and 
Bashan, were thus annexed to the dominions 
of the Assyrian king, who remained some 
time at Damascus, settling his conquests. 
Ahaz had small cause to rejoice in this al- 
teration, for although he was delivered from 
his immediate fears, the formidable Assyrian 
had now become his near neighbour, and 
was not likely to treat him with much con- 
sideration; and in fact the result was that he 
" distressed him, but strengthened him not." 
The king of Judah, however, found it prudent 
to visit Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus, to con- 
gratulate him on his victories, and to tender 
his homage. This visit only taught him new 
fashions of idolatry and sin ; which on his 
return home he continued to practise ap- 
parently until his death, which took place in 
B.C. 725, after a disgraceful reign of sixteen 
years. He was allowed a grave in Jerusalem; 
but no place in the sepulchre of the kings 
was granted to him. 



^ CHAP. VIII.] ISRAEL. FROM 895 B.C. TO 719 B.C. 359 



CONTEMPOR 

KlN'GS OF JuDAH. 



Q. Athaliah B.C. 895 

Joash or Jehoash 889 

Amaziah 849 

Interregnum 820 

TJzziah or Azariah 809 



Jotham 757 

Ahaz 741 

Died 725 



ARY KINGS. 



Kings of Israel. 

Jehu . B.C. 895 

Jehoahaz 867 

Jehoash or Joash 850 

Jeroboam II 834 

First Interregnum • 793 

Zachariah and Shallum .... 771 

Menahem 770 

Pekahiah 760 

Pekah 758 

Second Interregnum 738 

Hoshea 728 

Samaria taken ... 719 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ISRAEL, from 895 B.C. to 719 B.C. 



Jehu, having executed his avenging mission 
upon the house of Ahab, and overthrown the 
idolatries of Baal, ascended the throne of 
Israel in the year 895 b.c. 

There was a point beyond which Jehu was 
not prepared to go in his boasted zeal for 
Jehovah. He was ready to punish and dis- 
countenance all foreign worship ; but it was 
no part of his policy to heal the schism be- 
tween Judah and Israel, by abolishing the 
separate and highly irregular establishment 
for the worship of Jehovah, before the sym- 
bolic golden calves, which Jeroboam had 
established, and which all his successors 
had maintained. The vital root therefore 
remained in the ground, although the 
branches had been lopped off. It also ap- 
peared, ere long, that the foreign idolatries 
of Ahab and Jezebel had acquired too much 
prevalence to be entirely extirpated by any 
coercive reformation. As soon as the heat of 
that reformation had cooled, such idolatries 
again gradually stole into use, although no 



longer with the sanction or favour of the 
government. 

For these things the kingdom of Israel 
was in the latter days of J ehu allowed to be 
shorn of the provinces beyond Jordan. That 
fair country was ravaged, and its fortresses 
seized by Hazael, king of Syria, who, with- 
out any recorded opposition from the king 
of Israel, appears to have annexed it to his 
own dominions. 

Jehu died in 867 B.C., after a reign of 
twenty-eight years. 

He was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, 
who reigned seventeen inglorious years. He 
followed the latter course of his father, and 
the people followed their own course. The 
same kind of punishment was therefore con- 
tinued. The Syrians were still permitted to 
prevail over Israel, until, at length, Jehoahaz 
had only left, of all his forces, ten chariots, 
fifty horsemen, and ten thousand infantry ; 
for " the king of Syria had destroyed them, 
and had made them like dust by threshing." 



300 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



By these calamities the king was at last 
awakened to a sense of his position and his 
danger : he made supplication to Jehovah 
with tears ; and therefore his latter days 
were favoured with peace. He died in 850 

B.C. 

Joash, his son, began to reign in the 
thirty-seventh year of his namesake, Joash 
king of Judah. Josephus gives this king a 
good character, which the sacred historian 
does not confirm. From looking at the few 
incidents of his life which it has been deemed 
worth while to preserve, we may reconcile 
these statements by discovering that he was 
in his private character a well-disposed, al- 
though weak, man ; while as a king he made 
no efforts to discourage idolatry or heal the 
schism which the establishment of the golden 
calves had produced. In his days Elisha the 
prophet fell sick of that illness of which he 
died. When the king heard of his danger, 
he went to visit his dying bed, and wept over 
him, crying, "0 my father! my father!— the 
chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" 
As the idolatrous generation was now be- 
coming extinct, and the good dispositions of 
Joash himself were recognised, the dying 
prophet was enabled to assure him, by a 
significant symbol, of three victories over 
the Syrians. Accordingly, Joash was en- 
abled to keep them in check, and in the end 
to gain the ascendancy over them, so as to 
recover from Ben-hadad the possessions of 
which his own father had been deprived by 
the father of that Syrian king. 

Joash reigned seventeen years. 

In the year 834 B.C., Jeroboam II. suc- 
ceeded his father, whom he appears to have 
much resembled in character and proceedings. 
He began badly ; and Josephus says that he 
engaged in various absurd foreign under- 
takings which proved very injurious to the 
nation. He was probably improved by 
ripening years ; for the prophet Jonah was 
commissioned to promise him the complete 
recovery of the former dominions of the state. 
A great victory over the Syrians accordingly 
restored to him all the ancient divisions of 
Israel, from-flamath to the borders of the 
Dead Sea. His signal success over Amaziah 
the king of Judah has been recorded in the 



preceding chapter. Upon the whole, the 
reign of Jeroboam II. may be regarded as 
a brilliant one, considering the evil days on 
which the history has now fallen. In fact, 
it would not be easy to point to any king of 
the separate kingdom of Israel whose reign 
was more prosperous. 

The prophet Jonah, named in the preced- 
ing paragraph, is the same whose reluctant 
mission to Nineveh, the capital of the As- 
syrian empire, is related in the book which 
bears his name. " The king of Nineveh," 
whose humiliation with that of his people 
averted the doom impending over " that ex- 
ceeding great city," is supposed to have been 
the predecessor of Pul, whom the history will 
speedily bring before us. Jonah's remarkable 
mission appears to have taken place about the 
year 800 b.c, at the latter end of the reign of 
J eroboam, who died in 793 B.C., after a reign 
of forty-one years. 

There was a delay in calling his son 
Zachariah to the throne. Jeroboam II. 
began to reign in the fifteenth year of 
Amaziah king of Judah, and reigned forty- 
one years*; he died, therefore, in the six- 
teenth year of Uzziah, king of Judah; but 
his son Zachariah did not succeed him until 
the thirty-eighth of Uzziahf, which produces 
an interregnum of not less than twenty-two 
years. During this period great internal 
commotions prevailed, which more than com- 
pensated the absence of foreign war. Kings 
were suddenly raised to the throne, and as 
suddenly removed, agreeably to the repre- 
sentation which the prophet Hosea gives 
of the state of the kingdom. The same re- 
presentation also proves that at this period 
very gross corruptions of religion and of 
morals prevailed. Even the ultimate call of 
Zachariah to the throne had scarcely any 
effect in allaying these disturbances, and he 
was himself slain by Shallum in the sixth 
month of his reign. He was the last king 
of the house of Jehu : and thus was ful- 
filled the prediction that the family of Jehu 
should only retain the throne to the fourth 
generation. 

Shallum, whose deed in slaying Zachariah 
was performed with the sanction and in the 



* 2 Kings xiv. 23. 



f 2 Kings xv. 8. 



CHAP. VIII.] 



ISRAEL, FROM 895 B.C. TO 719 B.C. 



361 



presence of the people, ascended the vacant 
throne in the year 771 b.c. But on receiving 
intelligence of this event, Menahem, the ge- 
neral of the army, marched against the new 
king, and having defeated and slain him 
in battle, after a reign of but thirty days, 
mounted the throne himself ; and, through 
his influence with the army, he was enabled 
not only to retain his post, but to subdue the 
disturbances by which the country had of 
late years been distracted. In doing this he 
proceeded with a degree of barbarity which 
would have been scarcely excusable in even 
a foreign conqueror*. 

It was in the time of Menahem that the 
Assyrians under Pul made their first ap- 
pearance in Syria. Their formidable force 
precluded even the show of opposition from 
the king of Israel, who deemed it the wiser 
course to purchase peace from the Assyrian 
king at the price of a thousand talents of 
silver t. This sum he raised by the unpo- 
pular measure of a poll tax of fifty shekels 
each! upon 60,000 of his wealthiest subjects. 
This is the first instance in either kingdom of 
money raised by taxation for a public object. 
In the kingdom of Judah such exigencies 
were met from the treasury of the temple, 
or of the crown ; and probably there were, 
in ordinary times, analogous resources in 
Israel, but which we may readily conclude 
to have been exhausted in the recent 
troubles and confusions in that kingdom. 
Professor Jahn considers that the govern- 
ment of Israel had by this time become 
wholly military, in which conclusion we are 
disposed to acquiesce, although from other 
intimations than those to which he adverts. 

After a reign of ten years Menahem died 
in 760 b.c, and was succeeded by his son 
Pekahiah, who, after a short and undis- 
tinguished reign of two years, was slain by 
Pekah, the commander of the forces, who 
placed himself on the throne. 

The alliance of Pekah with Reziz the king 
of Syria, against the house of David, has 
been recorded in the preceding chapter, as 

* Joseph. ' Antiq.* ix. 11, § 1. 

t Almost 375,000?. by the present value of this quantity 
of silver. 

+ Six pounds five shillings sterling. 



well as the consequences which resulted from 
the resort of Ahaz, king of Judah, to the 
protection of Tiglath-pileser, the new king 
of Assyria, who overran Gilead and Galilee, 
and removed the inhabitants to Assyria and 
Media. After a reign of twenty years, Pekah 
received from Hosea the same doom which 
he had himself inflicted upon his predecessor. 
This was in 738 B.C., being in the third year 
of the reign of Ahaz in Judah. 

It appears that although Hosea is counted 
as the next king, he was not immediately 
able to establish himself on the throne, but 
that an interregnum, or period of anarchy, 
of ten years' duration, followed the murder 
of Pekah§ . Thus, although the kingdom of 
Israel was now enclosed within very narrow 
boundaries, and surrounded on the north and 
east by the powerful Assyrians, it could not 
remain quiet, but was continually exhaust- 
ing its strength in domestic conspiracies and 
broils. 

From this struggle the regicide Hosea 
emerged as king. He proved a better ruler 
than most of his predecessors. He allowed 
the king of Judah (Hezekiah) to send mes- 
sengers through the country inviting the 
people to a great passover, which he in- 
tended to celebrate at Jerusalem, nor did 
he throw any obstacles in the way of the 
persons disposed to accept the invitation. 
He had a spirit which might have enabled 
him to advance the power and interests of 
the country, under ordinary circumstances; 
but now, doomed of God, the kingdom was 
too much weakened to make the least effort 
against the Assyrian power. When therefore 
Shalmaneser, the new Assyrian king, invaded 
the country, he bowed his neck to receive 
the yoke of a tributary. This yoke, however, 
he found so galling, that ere long he took 
measures for shaking it off. He made a 
treaty with "So," or Sabaco||, king of Egypt, 

§ " Pekah, king of Israel, began to reign in the fifty- 
second year of Uzziah (2 Kings xv. 27; 2 Chron. xxvi. 3) ; 
and in the twentieth year of his reign was slain by Hoshea 
(xv. 30), in the third year of the reign of Ahaz king of 
Judah (2 Kings xvi. 1) ; but Hoshea did not begin to reign 
until the twelfth year of Ahaz (xvii. 1), or the thirteenth 
current (2 Kings xvi. 10) ; consequently the second inter- 
regnum in Israel lasted 13-3=10 years.— Hales. 

H This So, or Sabaco of profane authors,— Sabakoph on 
the monuments,— was an Ethiopian who ruled in Egypt, 



362 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



and on the strength of it ventured to seize 
and imprison the Assyrian officer appointed 
to collect the tribute. Upon this, Shalmaneser 
laid siege to Samaria, and after three years 
gained possession of that city and destroyed 
it. During all this time the king of Egypt 
made no attempt to come to the assistance 
of Israel, as Isaiah had from the beginning 
predicted, in language of strong reprehension, 
against this alliance*. The fall of Samaria 
consummated the conquest of the country 
by the Assyrians. Hosea was himself among 
the captives, and was sent in chains to 
Nineveh ; but what afterwards became of 
him is not known. Considerable numbers 
of the principal Israelites, during the war, 
and at its disastrous conclusion, fled the 
country, some to Egypt, but more into 
Judea, where they settled down as subjects 
of Hezekiah, whose kingdom must have been 
considerably strengthened by this means. 

According to a piece of Oriental policy of 
which modern examples have been offered, 
Shalmaneser removed from the land the 
principal inhabitants, the soldiers, and the 
artisans to Halab, to the river Habor 
(Ghebar in Ezekiel), to Gozan, and to the 
cities of the Medes. On the other hand, co- 

and whose right to the crown of which may have been (in 
part, at least) derived from marriage, although Herodotus 
represents him solely as an intrusive conqueror. His name 
occurs at Abydus; and the respect paid to his monuments 
by his successors may be considered to imply that his reign 
was not a wrongful usurpation. 
* Isaiah xxx. 1—7- 



lonists were brought from Babylon, Cuthah, 
Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and seated 
in Samaria. It appears also that other colo- 
nists were afterwards sent into the country 
by Esarhaddonf. These people mingled 
with the Israelites, who still abode in the 
land, and were all comprehended under the 
general name of Samaritans, which was de- 
rived from the city of Samaria. At first all 
of them were worshippers of idols ; but as 
wild beasts increased in their depopulated 
country, they were much disturbed by lions. 
According to the notions respecting national 
and local gods which then prevailed in the 
world, it is not strange that they attributed 
this calamity to the anger of the god of the 
country on account of their neglect of his 
worship. Accordingly, an Israelitish priest 
was recalled from exile, in order to instruct 
these idolaters in the worship of Jehovah 
as a national Deity. He settled at Bethel, 
where one of the golden calves had formerly 
stood ; and afterwards the Samaritans united 
the worship of Jehovah with the worship of 
their own gods. 

We will follow the expatriated Israelites 
into the places of their captivity; but first 
it is necessary that our attention should be 
turned to the affairs of Judah, which the 
mercy and long-suffering of God still con- 
tinues to spare. 

f Ezra iv. 2 ; comp. 9, 10. 



CHAPTER IX. 
JUDAH, from 725 B.C. to 586 b.c 



Hezekiah was twenty-five years of age when 
he succeeded his father Ahaz, in the kingdom 
of Judah. He was a most pious prince, and 
thoroughly imbued with the principles of the 
theocracy. He testified the most lively zeal 
for the service and honour of Jehovah; while, 
as a king, he was disposed to manifest the 
most unreserved reliance on Him and sub- 
servience to Him, as Sovereign Lord of the 
Hebrew people. He therefore won the high I 



eulogium that after him there " was none 
like him among all the kings of Judah, nor 
any that were before him."* 

He began his reign by the restoration of 
the true religion and the abolishment of 
idolatry throughout his dominions. In the 

* 2 Kings xviii. 1—5. Such, however, must be under- 
stood as popular forms of describing superior character; 
for the same is said, in the same terms, of his own great- 
grandson, Josiah. 



CHAP. IX.] 

very first month he opened the doors of the 
temple, which his father had closed, and 
restored the worship and service of God in 
proper order and beauty. In extirpating 
idolatry he was not content with the abo- 
lition of its grosser forms, but sought out 
the more native and intimate superstitions 
which were incentives thereto. The altars 
illegally erected to Jehovah, which former 
kings had spared, were by him overthrown. 
The brazen serpent, which Moses had made 
in the wilderness, and which was preserved 
in the temple, came m time to be regarded 
as a holy relic, to which at last a sort of 
superstitious worship was paid, and incense 
burned before it. This was not unnatural, 
considering the history of this relic, com- 
bined with the fact that ophiolatry was 
then, and before and after, a very common 
superstition in Egypt and other countries. 
It nobly illustrates the vigour of Heze- 
kiah's character, and his entire freedom from 
superstition of which it is difficult now to 
appreciate the full merit, that he spared 
not even this certainly interesting relic, but 
broke it in pieces, and instead of nahash, " a 
serpent," called it contemptuously nehushtan, 
"a brazen bauble." 

Much attention was also paid by Hezekiah 
to the dignified and orderly celebration of 
the festivals, which formed so conspicuous a 
feature in the ritual system of the Hebrews. 
The passover in particular, which had fallen 
into neglect, was revived with great splendour, 
and, as noticed in the last chapter, Hezekiah 
sent couriers through the kingdom of Israel 
to invite the attendance of the Israelites. 
His object was so obviously religious only, 
without any political motives, that the last 
king of Israel offered no opposition : and 
indeed a kingdom so nearly on the point 
of being absorbed into the great Assyrian 
empire, had small occasion to concern itself 
respecting any possible designs of Hezekiah. 
The Israelites were therefore left to act 
as their own dispositions might determine. 
The couriers went on from city to city 
proclaiming the message, and delivering 
the letters with which they were charged 
In these the king of Judah manifested 
great anxiety to induce the Israelites— 



363 

" the remnant .... who had escaped out 
of the hands of the kings of Assyria"* — 
to return to Jehovah, and by that return 
avert that utter destruction which seemed 
to impend over them. The great body of 
the Israelites received the invitation with 
laughter and derision ; but in Zebulon, 
Manasseh, and Asher, some were found 
who "humbled themselves, and came to 
Jerusalem." 

Like David, his great model, Hezekiah 
made provision for the instruction and 
moral improvement of the people by the 
public singing of the Psalms in the temple, 
and by a new collection of the moral maxims 
of Solomon. 

For his righteous doings the Lord was 
with Hezekiah, and prospered him in all 
his reasonable undertakings. He extended 
the fortifications and magazines throughout 
the country ; he supplied Jerusalem more 
plentifully with water by means of a new 
aqueduct; and the Philistines, who had pe- 
netrated into the southern parts of Judea in 
the reign of his father, were conquered by 
his arms. 

The possession of the kingdom of Damas- 
cene-Syria, and the entire conquest of Israel, 
rendered the kings of Assyria all-powerful 
in those countries. Phoenicia was the next 
to experience the force of their arms. The 
Tyrians only (according to the citation which 
Josephus adduces from their own historian, 
Menander) refused to receive the Assyrian 
yoke. They fought and dispersed the fleet 
which the subjugated Phoenicians had fur- 
nished for the ulterior objects and remoter 
enterprises of Shalmaneser. To avenge this 
act, the Assyrian king left his troops for five 
years in the Tyrian territory, where they 
grievously distressed the citizens of Tyre, by 
cutting off all access to the river and aque- 
duct from which the town obtained its water. 
It was the death of Shalmaneser, apparently, 

* Some have inferred from this that this was after the 
captivity of Israel. But that did not take place until the 
sixth year of Hezekiah ; and it is not likely that one who 
began his reforms with so much promptitude and vigour, 
deferred the passover until after six years. Besides, the 
kingdom of Israel after the losses of Pekah to the Assyrians, 
was but a " remnant" of what it had been. 



JUDAH, FKOM 725 B.C. TO 586 B.C. 



364 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[book IY. 



which induced the Assyrians to abandon the 
siege. 

It was probably the same occasion, together 
with an undue reliance upon his fortifications, 
and too much confidence derived from the 
success which had attended the small wars 
in which he had been engaged, which led 
Hezekiah into the same temerity which had 
been the ruin of Hosea. He discontinued 
the tribute to the Assyrians which had been 
imposed upon his father, and by that act 
threw off the yoke which Ahaz had volun- 
tarily taken on himself. 

In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, the 
new king of Assyria, named Sennacherib, 
came with a large army to reduce tbe kingdom 
of Judah to obedience, as well as to invade 
Egypt, on account of the encouragement 
which " So," the king of that country, had 
given to Hosea to revolt, by promises of as- 
sistance, which he proved unable to render. 
Such promises appear to have been renewed 
to Hezekiah, to induce him to give trouble 
and employment to a power of which the 
Egyptians had good cause to be jealous. 
But the new king, Sethos [Se-pthah, priest of 
Pthah], who had been a priest, considering 
the services of the soldiers unnecessary to 
the security of a kingdom entrusted to the 
protection of the gods, treated the mili- 
tary caste with much indignity, and much 
abridged their privileges, in consequence of 
which they refused, when required, to march 
against the Assyrians. 

Hezekiah, disappointed of the assistance 
which he had expected from Egypt*, and 
observing the overwhelming nature of the 
force put in action, delayed not to make his 
submissions to Sennacherib, humbly acknow- 
ledging his offence, and offering to submit to 
any tribute which the king might impose 
upon him. The desire of the Assyrian 
not to delay his more important operations 
against Egypt, seems to have inclined him 
to listen favourably to this overture. He 
demanded three hundred talents of silver, 

* That he had expectations from that quarter, and that 
such expectations were known to the Syrians, appears from 
Rabshakeh's advice to him,—" Now, behold, thou trustest 
upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on 
which if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce 
it." 2 Kings xviii. 17—35. 



and thirty talents of gold ; and this was 
paid by Hezekiah, although to raise it he 
was compelled to exhaust the royal and 
sacred treasures, and even to strip off the 
gold with which the doors and pillars of the 
temple was overlaid. 

Sennacherib received the silver and gold ; 
but after he had taken Ashdod, one of the 
keys of Egypt, he began to think it would 
be unsafe in his invasion of that country to 
leave the kingdom of Judah unsubdued in 
his rear. He therefore determined to com- 
plete the subjugation of Judah in the first 
place, — the rather as his recent observations, 
and the humble submission of Hezekiah, left 
him little reason to expect much delay or dif- 
ficulty in this enterprise. He soon reduced 
all the cities to his power except Libnah and 
Lachish, to which he laid siege, and Jerusa- 
lem, to which he sent his general Rabshakeh 
with a very haughty summons to surrender. 
Many blasphemous and disparaging expres- 
sions were applied to J ehovah by the heathen 
general. By this He was, as it were, bound 
to vindicate his own honour and power; and, 
accordingly, the prophet Isaiah was commis- 
sioned to promise the king deliverance, and 
to foretell the destruction of the Assyrian 
host : " Behold, I will send a blast upon him, 
and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return 
to his own land ; and I will cause him to fall 
by the sword in his own land."t 

The rumour by which Sennacherib was 
alarmed and interrupted, was no other than 
the report which was spread abroad that 
Tirhakah the Ethiopian, king of Upper 
Egypt J, was marching with an immense 

f 2 Kings xix. 7- 

% " With Tirhakar we are acquainted, both from sacred 
and profane records ; and his successful opposition to the 
power of Assyria is noticed in the Bible (2 Kings xix. 19; 
Isa. xxxvii. 9), may be traced in Herodotus (ii. 141), and is 
recorded on the walls of a Theban temple. It is possible that 
in the early part of his reign Sethos (or " So ") divided the 
kingdom with him, and ruled in Lower Egypt, while the 
Ethiopian monarch possessed the dominion of the upper 
country ; and this would account for the absence of the 
name of Sethos on the monuments of Thebes. Whether 
Tirhakah and Sabaco's claims to the throne of Egypt were 
derived from any right acquired by intermarriage with the 
royal family of that country, and whether the dominion 
was at first confined to the Thebaid it is difficult to deter- 
mine : but the respect paid by their successors to the 
monuments they erected, argues the probability of their 
having succeeded to the throne by right, rather than by 
usurpation or the force of arms."-Wilkinson, i. 140. It 



CHAP. IX.] 



JUDAH, FROM 725 B.C. TO 586 B.C. 



365 




[firhakah. Rosellini.] 



j army to cut off his retreat. He then de- 
termined to withdraw ; but first sent a boast- 
ing letter to Hezekiah, defying the God of 
Israel, and threatening what destructions he 
would execute upon the nation on his return. 
But that very night an immense proportion 
of the Assyrian host — even one hundred and 
eighty thousand men — were struck dead by 
" the blast " which the prophet had pre- 
dicted, and which has, with great probability, 
been ascribed to the agency of the Simoom, 
or hot pestilential south wind. 

Sennacherib returned to Mneveh, and in 
the exasperation of defeat he behaved with 
great severity to the captive Israelites. But 
his career was soon closed. Fifty-two days 
after his return he was slain, while worship- 
ping in the temple of the god Nisroc, by his 
two eldest sons. Thus the prophecy of Isaiah 
was in every point accomplished. The par- 
ricides fled into Armenia, leaving the steps 
of the throne clear for the ascent of the third 
son, whose name was Esarhaddon. This great 

should be added, that at Medinet Abou are the figure and 
name of Tirhakah, and of the captives he took. The 
figure is that which we have given from Rosellini. It will 
be observed that he wears the crown of Upper Egypt, and 
that only. The name of Sabaco (Sethos, or So) is found 
at Abydus. 



blow so weakened the Assyrian monarchy as 
not only to free the king of Judah from his 
apprehensions, but enabled the Medes. and 
Babylonians to assert their independence. 

The same year Hezekiah fell sick — ap- 
parently of the plague — and he was warned 
by the prophet Isaiah to prepare for death. 
The king was afflicted at these tidings ; and 
turning his face to the wall (as he lay in 
his bed), to be unnoticed by his attendants, 
he besought the Lord, with tears, to remem- 
ber him with favour. His prayer was heard ; 
and the prophet, who had not yet left the 
palace, was charged to return and acquaint 
Hezekiah, that on the third following day 
he should resume his customary attendance 
at the Temple ; and not only that, but that 
fifteen years should be added to his life. In 
confirmation of this extraordinary commu- 
nication, the king desired some miraculous 
sign ; and accordingly the shadow of the 
style upon the dial of Ahaz went backward 
ten degrees. The event corresponded to these 
intimations. The prolongation of life was the 
more important and desirable to Hezekiah, 
as at that time there was no direct heir to 
the crown. These circumstances, together 
with the signal deliverance from Sennacherib, 
not only cured the people of the idolatry 
which Ahaz had introduced, and retained 
them for some time in their fidelity to 
Jehovah, but excited the curiosity and 
admiration of the neighbouring nations. 
Merodach-Baladan, the king of Babylon, 
sent an embassy to congratulate the king 
on his deliverance from the Assjrians 
(through which Merodach himself had been 
enabled to establish his independence in 
Babylon), and upon his recovery from his 
illness, as well as to make particular in- 
quiries respecting the miracle by which it 
was accompanied — and which must have 
been of peculiar interest to a scientific 
people like the Babylonians. Hezekiah ap- 
pears to have been highly flattered by this 
embassy from so distant a quarter. The 
ambassadors were treated with much atten- 
tion and respect, and the king himself took 
pleasure in showing them the curiosities and 
treasures of his kingdom. That he had trea- 
sures to show, seems to signify that he had 



366 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



recovered his wealth from the Assyrians, or 
had enriched himself by their spoil. 

The sacred historian attributes Hezekiah's 
conduct on this occasion to " his pride of 
heart," involving an appropriation to him- 
self of that glory which belonged only to 
Jehovah. Although, therefore, his conduct 
did not occasion the doom, it gave the pro- 
phet Isaiah occasion to make known to him 
that the treasures of his kingdom were the 
destined spoil, and his posterity the destined 
captives of the very nation whose present 
embassage had produced in him so much 
unseemly pride. This was in every way 
a most remarkable prediction ; for Babylon 
was then an inconsiderable kingdom, and 
the people almost unknown by whom the 
prediction was to be fulfilled. Hezekiah re- 
ceived this announcement with true Oriental 
submission — satisfied, he said, if there were 
but peace and truth in his own days. 

The remainder of Hezekiah's reign 
through the years of prolonged life which 
had been granted to him appears to have 
been prosperous and happy. To no other 
man was it ever granted to view the ap- 
proach of death with certain knowledge, 
through the long but constantly shortening 
vista of years that lay before him. At the 
time long before appointed, Hezekiah died, 
after a reign of twenty-nine years, B.C. 696. 

Manasseh was but twelve years of age 
when he lost his father, and began to reign. 
The temptations which surrounded him, and 
the evil counsels which were pressed upon 
him, were too strong for his youth. He was 
corrupted; and it seemed the special object 
of his reign to overthrow all the good his 
father had wrought in Judah. The crimes 
of all former kings seem light in comparison 
with those which disgraced his reign. He 
upheld idolatry with all the influence of the 
regal power, and that with such inconceivable 
boldness, that the pure and holy ceremonies 
of the temple service were superseded by ob- 
scene rites of an idol image set up in the 
very sanctuary ; while the courts of God's 
House were occupied by altars to "the host 
of heaven," or, the heavenly bodies. He 
maintained herds of necromancers, astro- 
logers, and soothsayers of various kinds. 



The practice which was, of all others, the 
most abhorrent to Jehovah, the king sanc- 
tioned by his own atrocious example, for he 
devoted his own children, by fire, to strange 
gods, in the blood-stained valley of Ben- 
Hinnom. Wickedness now reigned on high, 
and, as usual, persecuted righteousness and 
truth ; so that, by a strong but significant 
hyperbole, we are told that innocent blood 
flowed in the streets of Jerusalem like water. 

While these things were transacting in 
Judah, Esarhaddon tho king of Assyria was 
consolidating his power, and endeavouring to 
re-unite the broken fragments of his father's 
empire. It was not until the thirtieth year 
of his reign that he recovered Babylon, the 
affairs of which appear to have fallen into 
great disorder after, the death of Merodach- 
Baladan, if we may judge from the occurrence 
of five reigns and two interregnums of ten 
years, all in the course of the twenty-nine 
years, which preceded its reduction again 
under the Assyrian yoke. 

When Esarhaddon had sufficiently re- 
established his authority, and settled his 
affairs in the east, he turned his atten- 
tion westward, and determined to restore 
his authority in that quarter, and to avenge 
the disgrace and loss which the Assyrians 
had sustained in Palestine. This intention 
constituted him Jehovah's avenger upon the 
king and nation of Judah, for the manifold 
iniquities into which they had by this time 
fallen. 

Esarhaddon entered Judah in great force, 
defeated Manasseh in battle, took him alive, 
and sent him in chains to Babylon, together 
with many of his nobles and of the people. 
They were sent to Babylon probably because 
Esarhaddon, to prevent another defection, 
made that city his chief residence during 
the last thirteen years of his reign. It was 
probably on the same occasion that he re- 
moved the principal remaining inhabitants 
of Israel, and replaced them by more colonists 
from the east. 

In the solitude of his prison at Babylon, 
Manasseh became an altered and a better 
man. The sins of his past life, and the 
grievous errors of his government were 
brought vividly before him ; and, humbling 



CHAP. IX.] 



JUDAH, FROM 725 B.C. TO 586 B.C. 



367 



himself before the God of his fathers, he 
cried earnestly for pardon, and besought an 
opportunity of evincing the sincerity of his 
repentance. The history makes mention of 
his prayer, as having been preserved ; and 
the Apocrypha contains a prayer which pur- 
ports to be that which he used on this oc- 
casion. This it would be difficult to prove ; 
| but the prayer itself is a good one, and 
' suitable to the occasion. 

His prayer was heard, and the opportu- 
nity which he sought was granted to him. 
j Esarhaddon gave way t.o the suggestions of 
a more generous policy than that by which 
j he had been at first actuated. lie re- 
leased the captive from his prison, and after 
| having, we may presume, won him over to 
the interests of Assyria, and weaned him from 
the national bias in favour of an Egyptian 
alliance, sent him home with honour. Un- 
j questionably, he remained tributary to the 
j Assyrian monarch, and his territory was pro- 
j bably considered as forming a useful barrier 
j between the territories of Assyria and of 
I Egypt. On his return, Manasseh applied 
| himself with great diligence to the correc- 
tion of the abuses of his former reign. He 
I also fortified the city of Zion on the west 
side by a second high wall (or, perhaps, he 
only rebuilt and carried to a greater height 
the wall which the Assyrians had thrown 
down), and endeavoured as far as possible 
to restore the weakened kingdom to a better 
state. He died in 641 b.c, after a protracted 
reign of fifty-five years ; and, mindful of the 
first iniquities of his reign, a place in the 
Sepulchre of the Kings was denied him, but 
he was buried in his own garden. 

Amon the son of Manasseh was twenty-five 
years of age when he ascended the throne 
of Judah. He had been born after the re- 
pentance and restoration of his father ; yet 
the first ways of Manasseh, and not the last, 
were those which he chose to follow. He 
revived the idolatries which had been sup- 
pressed ; but the full development of his 
plans and character was interrupted by a 
conspiracy, in which he perished after a 
short reign of two years, 639 b.c. 

Josiah was but eight years old at the 
death of his father ; and during his minority 



the affairs of the government were admi- 
nistered by the high-priest Joachim and a 
council of elders at Jerusalem. The young 
king profited well by the excellent education 
he received under the tutelage of the high- 
priest. After a minority of eight years he 
assumed the government, and proceeded to 
act with far greater vigour against the idol- 
atries of the land than the regent had ven- 
tured to exercise. He not only destroyed 
every form of idolatry which he was able 
to detect, but overthrew the altars illegally 
erected to Jehovah, and corrected the other 
irregularities which had in previous times 
been tolerated. In the course of these pur- 
gations, which werp conducted by the king- 
in person, he came to Bethel, and there (ac- 
cording to the prediction made nearly four 
centuries before, which had mentioned him 
by 7iame,) he defiled the altar which Jeroboam 
ha'd erected before the golden calf in that 
place, by burning thereon the disinterred 
bones of dead men — the bones of the wor- 
shippers. And it was thus that the idola- 
trous altars were defiled by him throughout 
the land. 

The zeal of the king took him beyond the 
limits of his own kingdom into the land of 
Israel, which he traversed even to its remoter 
parts, uprooting idolatry and all its adjuncts 
wherever he came. For this rather remark- 
able proceeding out of his own kingdom, 
there are different ways of accounting. The 
most probable seems to be that, in restoring 
Manasseh to his throne, the king of Assyria 
had extended his authority (for the purpose 
of internal government) over the neighbour- 
ing territory. His favour and confidence, 
continued to Josiah, agrees with and helps 
to explain some other circumstances. 

When these operations were completed, 
measures were taken for a thorough repair 
of the temple. While this was in progress, 
the high-priest, Hilkiah, discovered the auto- 
graph copy of the Law, written by the hand 
of Moses, which had been deposited in or be- 
side the ark of the covenant in the sanctuary. 
By his direction Shaphan, the chief scribe, 
read therefrom in the audience of the king, 
who no sooner heard that part which contains 
the prophecies of Moses against the nation, 



368 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book IV. 



foretelling the captivities and destructions 
which should befall it for its iniquities, than 
Josiah knew by signs not to be mistaken, 
that the predicted calamities were imminent, 
for the iniquities had been rife, and the doom 
could not but soon follow ; already, indeed, 
by the captivity of Israel, it had been half 
accomplished. It was for this that the king 
rent his garments. He delayed not to send 
to Huldah, the prophetess, " who dwelt in 
Jerusalem in the college," to learn from her 
the real intentions of Jehovah, and the sense 
in which these alarming denunciations were 
to be understood. She confirmed the obvious 
interpretation, — that the unquenchable wrath 
of God would ere long be poured out upon 
Judah and Jerusalem, consuming, or bring- 
ing into bondage, the land, the city, the 
temple, the people, the king ; but adding, 
as to the king himself, that because of the 
righteousness which had been found in him, 
he should be gathered to his grave before 
those evil days arrived. 

By these disclosures new zeal for the Law 
was kindled in the heart of Josiah. The 
very same year, he caused the passover to 
be celebrated with great solemnity, in which 
not only the people of Judah, but the rem- 
nant of the Hebrew race, which the Assyrians 
had left in the land of Israel, joined. There 
had been no such passover since the founda- 
tion of the kingdom. 

To understand the circumstances which 
led to the death of king Josiah, it is neces- 
sary to view correctly the position of his 
kingdom, as a frontier barrier between the 
two great kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt, 
whose borders, by the conquests of the former 
power were, and had for some time been, 
in close and dangerous approximation. It 
is obvious that, from the first, the political 
game of Western Asia in that age lay be- 
tween Egypt and Assyria, the former power 
being the only power west of the Euphrates 
which could for an instant be expected to 
resist or retaliate the aggressive movements 
of the latter. There was little question that 
the rich and fertile valley of the Nile might 
tempt the cupidity or the ambition of the 
Assyrians. It was therefore the obvious po- 
lio/ of the kings of Egypt to maintain the 



kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a barrier 
between their country and the Assyrians, 
and it was the equally obvious policy of the 
latter to break that barrier down. Hence 
Hosea in Israel had been encouraged by 
Sabaco to assert his independence, with a 
promise of support, which there is reason to 
believe that the Egyptian king was less un- 
willing than unable to render. The fall of 
Israel, as it weakened the barrier, could not 
but be a matter of regret to the Egyptians, 
and it would still be their desire to strengthen 
the hands of the kings of Judah. In this 
position it became a question at Jerusalem, 
as it had been in Samaria, whether the for- 
bearance of the Assyrians should be pur- 
chased by submission, or that reliance should 
be reposed on the support of Egypt in oppo- 
sition to that great power. The kings and 
people seem to have been generally well dis- 
posed " to lean upon Egypt," not more from 
habit and ancient intercourse, than from the 
perception that it was clearly the interest 
of that country to support them against 
the Assyrians. But when it had happened 
more than once that Egypt, after having en- 
couraged them to shake off the Assyrian yoke, 
was unable (we cannot believe unwilling) to 
render the stipulated assistance at the time 
it was most needed, and left them exposed to 
the tender mercies of the provoked Assyrians, 
the prophets raised their voice against a con- 
fidence and an alliance by which nothing but 
calamity had been produced, and encouraged 
unreserved and quiet submission to the As- 
syrian yoke. Even Hezekiah, however, as 
we have seen, was induced by the prospect 
of support from Egypt to throw off his de- 
pendence on Assyria. The consequent in- 
vasion of Judah by Sennacherib was so ob- 
viously threatening to Egypt, that Sethos 
(the king who then reigned in Lower Egypt) I 
could only have been prevented by the state 
of affairs in his own dominion from rendering 
the assistance which he had led the king 
of Judah to expect. But, as already stated, 
this very unwarlike person — a priest by edu- 
cation and habit— had so offended the power- 
ful military caste by abridgments of their | 
privileges, that they refused to act, even in 
defence of the country. But when Tirhakah, i 



CHAP. IX.] 



JTJDAH, FEOX 725 B.C. TO 586 B.C. 



369 



the Ethiopian, who ruled in Upper Egypt, 
heard of the threatened invasion by Sen- 
nacherib, he marched against him; and the 
Scriptural account would imply that the 

I mere rumour of his approach sufficed to in- 

j duce the Assyrians to contemplate a retreat, 
which was hastened by the singular destruc- 
tion in his army by the pestilential simoom*. 

| This solitary example of assistance from 
Egypt, although from an unexpected quarter, 

I may be supposed to have strengthened the 
predilection of the king and people of Judah 
towards the Egyptian alliance ; and it was 
almost certainly with the concurrence of 
Egypt that Manasseh allowed himself to 
incur the wrath of the Assyrians. But 
during his imprisonment at Babylon he 
would seem to have acquired the convic- 
tion that it was his best policy to adhere 
to his Assyrian vassalage ; and we may con- 
clude he was not released without such oaths 
and covenants as his awakened conscience 
bound him to observe. He was probably re- 
stored to his throne as a sworn tributary, or 
as being bound to keep the country as a fron- 
tier against Egypt. The conduct of Josiah 
renders this the most probable conclusion. 

* Sir J. G. Wilkinson alleges, we know not on what 
authority, that Sennacherib was fought and beaten by Tir- 
hakah, and attributes to the jealousy of the Memphites the 
version of the affair given to Herodotus, by which he con- 
siders the truth to be disguised and the glory of Tirhakah 
obscured. This version is, that the Assyrians actually in- 
vaded Egypt ; and Sethos being unsupported by the mili- 
tary, was induced by a dream to march against the enemy 
at the head of an undisciplined rabble of artisans and 
labourers. While the two parties were encamped opposite 
each other, near Pelusium, a prodigious number of field 
mice visited the Assyrian camp by night and gnawed to 
pieces their quivers and bows, as well as the handles of 
their shields ; so that, in the morning, finding themselves 
without arms, they fled in confusion, losing great numbers 
of their men. This is the story which Sir J. G. Wilkinson 

j regards as invented by the Memphites to withdraw from 
Tirhakah the credit of the Assyrian overthrow, which was 
really his work. But from the cast given to the story, we 

, are very much more disposed to believe that it is rather 

i a version of the extraordinary overthrow which the As- 

! Syrians sustained by night in Palestine, and which the 
Egyptians desired to appropriate to their own country and 

\ their own gods. Or may it not be that, seeing the Hebrews 
alleged their God to be the Creator of the world, the 
Egyptians considered him the same as Pthah, the creator 

! in their mythology, and whose priest Sethos had been? 
This seems to us very likely, the rather as it is difficult 

i without this supposed identity to account for a circum- 
stance in a following reign, when Necho expected to in- 

, fiuence the pious Josiah by saying that God had sent him 
(Necho) to war against the Assyrians. 



The Assyrian power got involved in wars 
with the Medes and Chaldeans, by which its 
attention was fully engaged and its energies 
weakened. Egypt, on the other hand, united 
under one king, had been consolidating its 
strength. Pharaoh-Necho, the king of that 
country, thought the opportunity favourable 
to act aggressively against the Assyrians, and 
to that end resolved to march and attack this 
old enemy on his old frontier. Carchemish, 
an important post on the Euphrates, and 
the key of Assyria on the western side, was 
the point to which his march was directed. 
He passed along the sea-coast of Palestine, 
northward, the route usually followed by 
the Egyptian kings when they entered Asia. 
J osiah being apprised of this, and mindful of 
his relation to Assyria, and of his obligation 
to defend the frontier against the Egyptians, 
assembled his forces and determined to im- 
pede, if he could not prevent, the march of 
Necho through his territories. When the 
Egyptian king heard that Josiah had posted 
himself on the skirts of the plain of Esdraelon 
— that great battle-field of nations — to op- 
pose his progress, he sent messengers to en- 
gage him to desist from his interference, 
alleging that he had no hostile intentions 
against Judah, but against an enemy with 
whom he was at war, and warning Josiah 
that his imprudent interference might prove 
fatal to himself and his people. But these 
considerations had no weight with Josiah, 
against what appeared to him a clear case 
of duty. He resisted the progress of the 
Egyptian army with great spirit, considering 
the disproportion of numbers. He himself 
fought in disguise; but a commissioned arrow 
found him out, and inflicted a mortal wound 
in the neck. He directed his attendants to 
remove him from the battle-field. Escaping 
from the heavy shower of arrows with which 
their broken ranks were overwhelmed, they 
removed him from the chariot in which he 
was wounded, and, placing him in 11 the se- 
cond chariot that he had," they conveyed 
him to Jerusalem, where he died. Thus 
prematurely perished, at the age of thirty- 
nine, one of the best and most zealous kings 
who ever sat upon the throne of David. 
His zeal in his vocation, aa the overtur 3r 



b u 



370 



THE BIBLE HISTOllY. 



[BOOK IV. 



of idolatry, must have been much stimulated 
by the knowledge that he had been pre- 
ordained, by name, to this service, many 
centuries before his birth. We know not 
why the last act of his life should be deemed 
blameworthy by many who in other respects 
think highly of his character and reign. 
Was it not rather noble and heroic in him to 
oppose the vast host of Necho, in obedience 
to the obligation which his family had in- 
curred to the Assyrian kings, and in con- 
sideration . of which his grandfather, his 
father, and himself, had been permitted to 
exercise the sovereign authority in the land ? 
The death of Josiah was lamented by the 
prophet Jeremiah in an elegiac ode, which 
has not been preserved. 

Intent upon his original design, Necho 
paused not to avenge himself upon the 
Judahites for the opposition he had en- 
countered, but continued his march to the 
Euphrates. 

Three months had scarcely elapsed, when, 
returning victorious from the capture of 
Carchemish and the defeat of the Assyrians, 
he learned that the people had called a 
younger son of Josiah, named Jehoahaz 
or Shall um, twenty-three years old, to the 
throne, overlooking his elder brother. Dis- 
pleased that such a step had been taken 
without any reference to the will of their 
now paramount lord and conqueror, he sent 
and summoned Jehoahaz to attend on him at 
Riblah in the land of Hamath ; and having 
deposed him and condemned the land to pay 
in tribute a hundred talents of silver and a 
talent of gold, he took him as a prisoner to 
Jerusalem. On arriving there, Necho made 
Eliakim, the eldest son of Josiah, king in 
the room of his father, changing his name to 
Jehoiakim, according to a custom frequently 
practised by lords paramount and masters 
towards subject princes and slaves. The 
altered name was a mark of subjection. 
Then taking the silver and gold which he 
had levied upon the people, Necho departed 
for Egypt, taking with him the captive Je- 
hoahaz, who there terminated his short and 
inglorious career, according to the prophecy 
of Jeremiah'*. 

* Jer. xxii. 10—12. 



Jehoiakim, the eldest son of Josiah, was 
twenty-five years old when he began to reign. 
He reigned eleven years, and by his idolatries 
and misgovernment proved himself worthy of 
the throne of Ahaz and Manasseh. Earlv in 
his reign he was called to repentance by the 
prophet Jeremiah, who publicly, at the feast 
of tabernacles, in the ears of the assembled 
nation, denounced, in the name of Jehovah, 
the severest judgments against king and 
people, including the destruction of the city 
and the temple. For this he was seized as 
a seditious person, worthy of death; but he 
was acquitted by the nobles, and on this and 
other occasions screened by some persons of 
influence who had been in power in the good 
times of Josiah. 

Meanwhile the war in the east approached 
its termination. The allied Medes and Baby- 
lonians, the former under Cyaxares, and the ! 
latter under Nabopolassar, besieged the last 
Assyrian king in Nineveh. The siege was 
turned into a blockade ; and Nabopolassar, 
already a-suming the government of the em- 
pire which had fallen from the enfeebled 
hands of the Assyrians, despatched his son 
Nebuchadnezzar westward, with an adequate 
force, to chastise the Egyptians for their 
late proceedings, and to restore the revolted 
Syrians and Phoenicians to their obedience. 
In these different objects he completely suc- 
ceeded t. Carchemish he recovered from the 
Egyptians, and Jehoiakim was compelled to 
transfer his allegiance from Necho to the 
Babylonian. This was in the first year of 
his reign ; in the second, Nineveh was taken 
and destroyed by the allies. The conquering 
Medes were content to have secured their 
independence and avenged their wrongs, and 
left to the conquering Chaldeans the lion's 
share of the spoil. Babylon now became the 
imperial capital; but Nabopolassar himself, 
the founder of the great Chaldas-Babylonian 
empire, died almost immediately after the 
fall of Nineveh, and the young hero in the 
west was called to fill the glorious throne 
which his father had set up. 

The absence of Nebuchadnezzar in an- 
other quarter seemed to the king of Egypt 
a favourable opportunity of recovering his 

f Berosus in Joseph. « Antiq.' x 11,1. 



CHAP. IX.l 



'som 725 b.c. to 586 e.c. 



!'71 



foreign conquests. He therefore undertook 
another expedition against Carehemish*; 
and as Jehoiakim, in Judea, renounced, 
about the same time, his sworn allegiance 
to Nebuchadnezzar, there is much reason to 
conclude that he was encouraged to this step 
by the Egyptian king. This measure was 
earnestly but ineffectually reprobated by the 
prophet Jeremiah, who foretold the conse- 
quences which actually followed. 

Nebuchadnezzar, who was certainly the 
greatest general of that age, did not allow 
the Egyptian king to surprise him. He met 
and defeated him at Carchemish, and then, 
pursuing his victory, stripped the Egyptian 
of all his northern possessions, from the river 
Euphrates to the Nile, and this by so strong 
an act of repression that he dared "come not 
again any more out of his land." 

The king of Judah now lay at the mercy 
of the hero whose anger he had so un- 
advisedly provoked. Nebuchadnezzar laid 
siege to Jerusalem, and took it. He com- 
mitted no destructions but such as were the 
direct effect of his military operations ; and 
with a leniency very rare in those days, he 
refrained from displacing Jehoiakim from 
his throne. He was content to indemnify 
himself by the spoils of the temple, part of 
the golden ornaments and vessels of which 
he took away, and with removing to Babylon 
some members of the royal family, and sons 
of the principal nobles. These would serve 
as hostages, and at the same time help to 
swell the pomp and ostentation of the Baby- 
lonian court. Among the persons thus re- 
moved was Daniel and his three friends, 
whose condition and conduct will soon en- 
gage our notice, as part of the history of 
the Captivity. It must be evident that 
the leniency exhibited on this occasion by 
Nebuchadnezzar, may be ascribed to his de- 
sire to maintain the kingdom of Judah as 
a barrier between his Syrian dominions and 
Egypt ; for since Egypt had become ag- 
gressive, it was no longer his interest that 
this barrier should be destroyed. 

The court at Jerusalem soon again fell 
into much disorder. The king turned a 
deaf ear to all wise counsel and all truth, 



as delivered by the prophet Jeremiah, and 
listened only to the false prophets who won 
his favour by the flattering prospects which 
they drew, and by the chimerical hopes 
which they created. The final result was, 
that this prince again had the temerity to 
renounce his allegiance to the Babylonian, 
to whose clemency he owed his life and 
throne. 

This occurred in the fourth year of 
Jehoiakim, b.c. 604, which it is important 
to note, as it is from this date that the 
"seventy years " of the Babylonish captivity is 
with the greatest apparent propriety datedf. 
This period of seventy years of exile was 
foretold by Jeremiah and it is most re- 
markable, that from whichever of the more 
marked points these seventy years be com- 
menced, we are brought at the termination 
to some one equally marked point in the 
history of the restoration and re-settlement 
of the nation. 

Jehoiakim was not at all reformed by the 
calamity which had befallen his house and 
country. It only served to increase the fe- 
rocity of his spirit. This reign, therefore, 
continued to be cruel, tyrannical, and op- 
pressive; and still more and more his eyes 
and his heart were intent on covetousness, 
oppression, and the shedding of innocent 
blood. Of this an instance is found in the ! 
case of the prophet Urijah, whom he slew ! 
"with the sword, and cast his dead body into ' 
the graves of the common people," because 
he prophesied of the impending calamities of 
Judah and Jerusalem §. For these things 
the personal doom of Jehoiakim was thus 
pronounced by Jeremiah: — 

t Dated from this point, the seventy years expired m 
b.c. 536, the year that Cyrus took Babylon, and issued a 
decree for the return of such of the Jews as chose, through- 
out his dominions, to their own land (Ezra iii. 1, v. 13); 
and this agrees with the account of Josephus, " in the first 
year of Cyrus, which was the seventieth {jo i^o/^'AKorrrov) 
from the day of the removal of our people from their 
native land to Babylon," &c. (Ant. xi. 1, 1) ; for from b.c. 
605 to b.c. 536 was sixty-nine years complete, or seventy 
years current. Hales, to whom we are indebted for this 
conclusion, thinks, that it affords a satisfactory adjustment 
of the chronology of this most intricate and disputed period 
of the Captivity, and that in it " all the varying reports of 
sacred and profane chronology are reconciled and brought 
into harmony with each other." 

± Jer. xxv. 12, xxix. 10; 2 Cliron. xxxvi. 21—23. 

§ Jer. xxii. 13—16, xxvi. 20—23. 



B B 2 



372 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



" Thus saith Jehovah, 

Concerning Jehoiakini, son of Josiah, king of 
Israel, — 

They shall not lament for him, saying, 
Ah, my brother ! nor [for the queen], Ah, 
sister ! 

They shall not lament for him, saying, 
Ah, Lord ! nor [for her], Ah, her glory ! 
With the burial of an ass shall he be buried, 
Drawn forth and east beyond the gates of 
Jerusalem." * 

For this prophecy the prophet was cast 
into prison, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. 
The following year, acted upon by that strong 
constraint to deliver the word entrusted to 
him, which he himself so forcibly describes f, 
Jeremiah dictated to his friend and follower, 
the scribe Baruch, another prophecy, to the 
same effect as the former, but couched in 
stronger language, declaring the ruin which 
impended, through the Babylonian king, un- 
less speedy and strong repentance intervened 
to avert the doom. The roll, thus written, 
Baruch was sent to read publicly to the 
people assembled from all the country on 
account of a solemn fast for which public 
opinion had called. Baruch accordingly read 
it in the court of the temple, in the audience 
of all the people assembled there. He after- 
wards, at their request, read it more privately 
to the princes. They heard it with conster- 
nation, and determined to make its contents 
known to the king. Baruch was directed to 
go and conceal himself, and the roll was taken 
and read to the king, who was then sitting in 
his winter apartment, with a brazier of burn- 
ing charcoal before him. When he had heard 
three or four sections, the king kindled into 
rage, and taking the roll from the reader, he 
cut it with the scribe's knife, and threw it 
into the fire, where it was consumed. He 
also ordered the prophet and his friend to 
be put to death ; but this was averted by 

* Jer. xxii. 18, If). 

j " Thou didst persuade me, Jehovah, and I was per- 
suaded ; 

Thou wast s*rorge-i than I, and didst prevail. 
I am every day the object of laughter ; 
Every one of them holdeth me in derision. 
For whensoever I speak, — 

If I cry out of violence, and proclaim devastation, 
The word of Jehovah is turned against me, 



the kind providence of the Almighty Master 
whom they served. 

The undaunted prophet directed Baruch 
to re-write the prophecy which had been 
burnt, with additional matter of the same 
purport ; while to Jehoiakim himself the 
terrible message was sent : — 

" Thus saith Jehovah, 

Concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah, — 
He shall have none to sit upon the throne of 
David ; 

And his dead body shall be cast out, 
In the day to the heat, and in the night to 
the frost." — Jer. xxxvi. 30. 

The end of this miserable man doubtless 
corresponded with these predictions, although 
the historical narrative of that event is in- 
volved in some obscurity and apparent con- 
tradiction. The statement we shall now give 
appears to be the only one by which, as it 
appears to us, all these difficulties can be 
reconciled. It is evident that if Jehoiakim 
did not again revolt, his conduct was at least 
so unsatisfactory to the king of Babylon, that 
he sent an army against Jerusalem, con- 
taining some Chaldean troops, but composed 
chiefly from the surrounding subject nations, 
as the Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites. 
In what manner they performed their mis- 
sion we know not, but according to the 
figurative description which EzekielJ gives 
of Jehoiakim as a rapacious "lion's whelp,'" 
we learn that " the nations set against him 
on every side from the provinces, and spread 
their net over him: he was taken in their 
pit ; and they put him in ward in chains, 
and brought him to the king of Babylon." 
Nebuchadnezzar was then probably at Riblah, 
at which place the eastern conquerors appear 
to have usually held their court when in Syi ; i. 
He bound the captive king "in fetters [in- 
tending] to carry him to Babylon;" § but 
took him first to Jerusalem, where he ap- 

Into reproach and disgrace continually. 

But ichen I say, I will not make mention of it, 
Neither will I speak any more in his name; 
Then it becomes in my heart as a burning fire, 
Being- pent up in my bones: 

I am weary with refraining, atid cannot [be silent}." 

Jer. xs. 7 — 9. 

t Ezek. xix. 5—9. 
§ 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6. 



CHAP. IX.] 



JUDAH, FROM 725 B.C. TO 586 B.C. 



peaxs to have died before this intention could 
be executed; and the prophecies require us 
to conclude that his body was cast forth with 
indignity, and lay exposed to the elements 
and beasts of prey, which is what is intended 
by " the burial of an ass."* 

The preceding invaders appear to have 
been contented with securiug the person of 
Jehoiakim, and taking him to Nebuchad- 
nezzar; for when they had departed with 
their rojal captive, the people made his son 
Jecoxiah (otherwise Jehoiachim and Coniah) 
king in the room of his father. He was 
then (b.c. 597) eighteen years of age, and 
had barely time to manifest his bad dis- 
position, when Nebuchadnezzar himself, who 
was displeased at this appointment, appeared 
before Jerusalem. It would seem that he 
was admitted without opposition; but Jeco- 
niah was, nevertheless, held a close prisoner. 
The money which remained in the royal 
treasury, and the golden utensils of the 
temple, were collected and sent as spoil to 
Babylon ; and the deposed king, and his 
whole court, seven thousand soldiers, one 
thousand artisans, and two thousand nobles 
and men of wealth, altogether, with wives 
and children, amounting probably to 40,000 
persons, were sent away into captivity to the 
river Chebar (Chaboras) in Mesopotamia. 
Thus only the lower class of citizens and 
peasantry were left behind. The future 
prophet, Ezekiel, was among the captives ; 
and Mattaniah, the remaining son of Josiah, 
and brother of Jehoiakim, was made king of 
the impoverished land by Nebuchadnezzar, 
who, according to the custom in such cases, 
changed his name to Zedekiau, and bound 
him by strong and solemn oaths of alle- 
giance. 

The Hebrews who remained in Judah con- 
tinued however to cherish dreams of inde- 
pendence from the Chaldeans — impossible 
under the circumstances in which Western 
Asia was then placed, or possible only through 
such special interventions of Providence as 
had glorified their early history, but all 
further claim to which they had long since 
forfeited. Even the captives in Mesopotamia 
and Chaldea were looking forward to a 

* Jer. xxii. 19. 



speedy return to their own land. These 
extravagant expectations were strongly dis- 
couraged by Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and by 
Ezekiel in Mesopotamia ; but their reproofs 
were not heeded, nor their prophecies be- 
lieved. Accordingly, Zedekiah, who seems 
not to have been iil-disposed, otherwise than 
as influenced by evil counsellors, was led 
openly to renounce his allegiance, in the 
ninth year of his reign. The temerity of 
this act would be astonishing and unac- 
countable, were it not that, as usual, the 
renunciation was attended by an alliance 
with the king of Egypt, Pharaoh-Hophra — 
the Apries and Vaphres of profane authors — 
who indeed had acquired a prominence in 
this quarter which might make the pre- 
ference of his alliance seem a comparatively 
safe speculation. Apries in the early part of 
his reign was a very prosperous king. He 
sent an expedition against the Isle of Cyprus ; 
besieged and took Gazaf, and the city of 
Sidon ; engaged and vanquished the king of 
Tyre ; and, being uniformly successful he 
made himself master of Phoenicia, and part 
of Palestine; thus recovering much of that 
influence in Syria which had been taken 
from Egypt by the Assyrians and Babylo- 
nians. 

From the result it is evident that, on. 
receiving the news of this revolt of oue who 
owed his throne to him, and whose fidelity 
to him had been pledged by the most solemn 
vows, Nebuchadnezzar resolved no longer to 
attempt to maintain the separate existence 
of Judah as a royal state, but to incorporate 
it absolutely, as a province, with his empire. 
An army was, with little delay, marched 
into Judea, and laid immediate siege to 
Jerusalem. Jeremiah continued to counsel 
the king to save the city and temple by 
unreserved submission to the Chaldeans, and 
abandonment of the Egyptian alliance ; but 
his auditors, trusting that the Egyptians 
would march to the relief of the place, de- 
termined to protract the defence of the city 
to the utmost. The Egyptians did, in fact, 
march to their assistance ; but when Nebu- 
chadnezzar raised the siege of Jerusalem 
and advanced to meet them, they retreated 

t Jer. xlvii. 1. 



374 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



before him into Egypt, without hazarding a 
battle. 

The withdrawal of the Chaldean forces 
from Jerusalem, with the confident expec 
tation that they would be defeated by the 
Egyptians, filled the inhabitants with the 
most extravagant joy, and quite reversed, 
and so evinced the hollowness of, the slight 
acts of repentance and reformation which 
the apparent urgency of danger had pro- 
duced. Their short-lived joy was terminated 
by the re-appearance of the Chaldeans before 
the city. They prepared, however, to make 
a vigorous, or at least a protracted, defence, 
for they well knew that, after so many pro- 
vocations, little mercy was to be expected 
from Nebuchadnezzar, and they were pro- 
bably acquainted with the fell purpose which 
that great monarch appears to have formed. 

In the account of this siege much notice 
is taken of the respective works, the forts, 
the towers, etc., of the besiegers and the 
besieged. This may throw some light on 
the state to which the art of attacking and 
defending towns had then attained. 

The siege was continued until the eleventh 
year of Zedekiah (b.c. 586), eighteen months 
from the beginning, when the Chaldeans 
stormed the city about midnight, and put 
the inhabitants to the sword, young and old, 
many of them in the very courts of the 
temple. The king himself, with his sons, 
his officers, and the remnant of the army, 
escaped from the city, but were pursued by 
the Chaldeans, and overtaken in the plain of 
Jericho, and carried as prisoners to Nebu- 
chadnezzar, who was then at Riblah in the 
province of Hamah. The Babylonian king 
upbraided Zedekiah for his ingratitude and 
breach of faith, and ordered a terrible pu- 
nishment to be inflicted on him. To cut off 
all future hope of reignirjg in his race, he 
ordered his sons to be slain before his eyes ; 
and then, to exclude him from all hope of 
ever again reigning in his own person, he 
ordered that the last throes of his murdered 
children should be his last sight in this 
world. His eyes were put out — a barbarous 
mode of disqualifying a man for political 
good or evil, with which the governments of 
the East still continue to visit those whose 



offences excite displeasure, or whose pre- 
tensions create fear. The blind king was 
then led in fetters of brass to Babylon, where 
he died. Thus were fulfilled two prophecies 
by different and distant prophets, which by 
their apparent dissonance had created mirth 
and derision in Jerusalem. Jeremiah had 
told the king, after the return of the 
Chaldean army to the siege, that he 
should surely be taken prisoner; that 
his eyes should see the king of Babylon, 
and that he should be carried captive to 
Babylon, and that he should die there, not 
by the sword, but in peace, and with the 
same honourable " burnings " with which his 
fathers had been interred*; while Ezekiel 
had predicted that he should be brought 
captive to Babylon, yet should never see that 
city, although he should die therein f. 

Nebuchadnezzar appears to have been dis- 
satisfied at the only partial manner in which 
his purposes against Judah had been exe- 
cuted. He therefore sent Nebuzaradan, the 
captain of his guard, with an army of Chal- 
deans to Jerusalem. The temple and the 
city were then burnt to the ground, and all 
the walls demolished, while all the vessels of 
brass, silver, and gold, which had been left 
before, and all the treasure of the temple, 
the palace, and the houses of the nobles, 
were taken for spoil ; and of the people none 
were left but the poor of the land to be vine- 
dressers and husbandmen. This was about 
a month after the city was first taken. 

Thus was the land made desolate, that 
" she might enjoy her sabbaths," or the 
arrearage of sabbatic years, of which she had 
been defrauded by the avarice and disobe- 
dience of the people. That these sabbatic 
years, being the celebration of every seventh 
year as a season of rest, even to the soil 
which then lay fallow, amounted to not less 
than seventy, shows how soon, and how long, 
that important and faith-testing institution 
had been neglected by the nation. The 
early predictions of Moses J, and the later 
one of Jeremiah §, that the land should enjoy 
the rest of which it had been defrauded, is 
very remarkable, when we consider that, as 



* Jer. xxxii. 4, 5, xxxiv. 3, 5. 
Lev. xxvi. 34. 



|- Ezek. xii. 13. 

§ 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. 



CHAP. IX.] J LTD AH, FROM 725 

exemplified in Israel, it was not the general 
policy of the conquerors to leave the con- 
quered country in desolation, but to replenish 
it by foreign colonists, by whom it might be 
cultivated. 

Nebuchadnezzar made Gedaliah, a Hebrew 
of distinction, governor of the poor remnant 
which was left in the land. Gedaliah was a 
well-disposed man, of a generous and un- 
suspecting nature, who was anxious to pro- 
mote the well-being of the people by recon- 
ciling them to the Babylonian government. 
In this design he was assisted by J eremiah, 
who had been released from prison when the 
city was taken, and was treated with much 
consideration by the Babylonian general, to 
whose care he had been recommended by 
Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuzaradan in- 
deed offered to take him to Babylon and 
provide for him there ; but the prophet 
chose rather to remain with his friend Geda- 
liah. who fixed his residence at Mizpeh 
beyond Jordan. 

As soon as the Babylonian army had with- 
drawn, those nobles and warriors returned 
who had saved themselves by flight in the 
first instance. Among these was Ishmael, a 
prince of the royal family, who, jealous of 
the possession by Gredaliah of the government 
to which he considered that his birth gave 
him the best right, formed a conspiracy to 
take away his life. This was intimated to 
the governor, but he treated it as an infamous 
calumny upon Ishmael, which generous con- 
fidence was rewarded by his being murdered, 
with all the Hebrews and Chaldeans at Miz- 
peh who were attached to him, by that bad 
man and his dependants. The vengeance of 
the Chaldeans was now to be dreaded, and 
therefore Ishmael and all his followers fled 
towards the country of the Ammonites (who 
had promoted the designs of Ishmael). They 
attempted to take with them the king's 
daughter and the residue of the people ; but 
these were recovered by Johanan and other 
officers, who pursued them, so that Ishmael 
escaped with only eight men to the Ammon- 
ites. Johanan and the others were fearful 
of the effects of the resentment of the Chal- 
deans for the massacre of which Ishmael had 
been guilty. They therefore determined to 



B.C. to 586 B.C. 375 j 

take refuge in Egypt with all the people. 
This intention was earnestly opposed by 
Jeremiah, who, in the name of J ehovah, pro- 
mised them peace and safety if they re- 
mained ; but threatened death by pestilence, 
famine, and sword, if they went down to 
Egypt. They went, however, and compelled 
Jeremiah himself to go with them ; and it is 
alleged by tradition that they put him to 
death in that country for the ominous pro- 
phecies he continued to utter there. 

Nebuzaradan soon after arrived in the 
country with the view of avenging the mur- 
der of Gedaliah and the massacre of the 
Chaldeans who were . with him ; but the 
country was so thin of inhabitants, in con- 
sequence of the secession to Egypt, that he 
could find no more than 745 persons in the 
land, whom he sent into captivity beyond 
the Euphrates. Thus signally was the long 
predicted depopulation of the land com- 
pleted ; and although nomadic tribes wan- 
dered through the country, and the Edomites 
settled in some of its southern parts, yet the 
land remained, on the whole, uninhabited, 
and ready for the Hebrews, whose return had 
as much been the subject of prophecy as 
their captivity had been. 

For the clearer apprehension of the facts 
which have been stated, it will be desirable 
to trace the further operations of the Baby- 
lonians in those quarters. 

The year after the conquest of Judea, 
Nebuchadnezzar resolved to take a severe 
revenge upon all the surrounding nations 
which had solicited the Judahites to a con- 
federacy against him, or had encouraged 
them to rebel, although they now, for the 
most part, rejoiced in their destruction. 
These were the Ammonites, Moabites, Edom- 
ites, Arabians, the Sidonians, Tyrians, and 
Philistines ; nor did he forget the Egyptians, 
who had taken a foremost part in action or 
intrigue against him. This had been fore- 
told by the prophets. It had been foretold 
that all these nations were to be subdued by 
Nebuchadnezzar, and were assigned to share 
with the Hebrews the bondage of seventy 
years to that power. Some of them were 
conquered sooner and some later ; but the 
| end of this period was the common term for 



376 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK IV. 



the deliverance of them all from their bond- 
age to Babylon. 

After Nebuchadnezzar had subdued the 
eastern and western states in his first cam- 
paign, he commenced the siege of the strong 
city of Old Tyre, on the continent, in the 
year 584 B.C., being two years after the de- 
struction of J erusalem. This siege occupied 
thirteen years, a fact which illustrates, per- 
haps, not so much the strength of the place 
as the vitality of a commercial state. This 
is, however, only to intimate that during this 
period the city was invested by a Chaldean 
army ; for many other important enterprises 
were undertaken and accomplished during 
the same period. It was during the siege 
that Nebuzaradan marched into Judea to 
avenge the murder of Gedaliah and the 
Chaldeans, as just related. 

Before Tyre was taken, the inhabitants, 
having the command of the sea, fled with all 
their effects to the insular Tyre in its neigh- 
bourhood ; so that the Chaldean army found 
but little spoil to reward their long toil and 
patience in the siege. This had been fore- 
told by the prophet Ezekiel*; but although 
Nebuchadnezzar had "no wages, nor his 
army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had 
served against it," in the long course of 
which " every head was made bald, and every 
shoulder was peeled," yet as a compensation 
they were promised the plunder of " the land 
of Egypt," "her multitude," "her spoil," 
and "her prey." Accordingly, in the spring 
of the year 570 B.C., after the war with Tyre 
was finished, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, 
and, from a concurrence of weakening cir- 
cumstances in that country, was enabled to 
overrun the whole country from Migdol, its 
northern extremity, near the Bed Sea, to 
Syene, the southern, bordering upon Ethiopia. 
This he also subdued, together with the other 
auxiliaries of the Egyptians. The reigning 
king was the same Pharaoh-Hophra, or 
Apries, who was on the throne at the time 
J erusalem was besieged, and whose faint and 
abortive motion to relieve his allies has been 
recorded. This proud and haughty tyrant 

* Ezek. xxix. 18—20. 



was reduced to vassalage ; and so wasted and 
depopulated was the land by the invaders 
that it lay comparatively desolate for forty 
years. The king was himself soon after de- 
feated and captured by his discontented and 
revolted subjects, under Amasis, who was 
made king, and who was reluctantly com- 
pelled by the clamours of the soldiers to in- 
flict death upon his predecessor. Amasis 
was confirmed in the throne by the Assyrian 
kingf. 

t To this account, in which Hales and his authorities 
have been followed, it seems desirable to add the remarks 
which are found in Sir J. G. Wilkinson's recent work on 
the Ancient Egyptians (i. 174, &c). After quoting the 
prophecies, which, in connection with the statements of 
Herodotus, are given as history in our own text, he says:— 
" I shall now endeavour to show how these prophecies 
were accomplished, and to explain the probable reason of 
Herodotus' silence on the subject of Nebuchadnezzar's in- 
vasion. The defeat and death of Apries, before mentioned, 
are given on the authority of Herodotus, who represents 
Amasis as a rebel chief, taking advantage of the disaffection 
of the army to dethrone his sovereign. This information 
he received from the Egyptian priests; but no mention 
was made of the signal defeat their army experienced, or 
of that loss of territory in Syria which resulted from the 
successes of the victorious Nebuchadnezzar. It is therefore 
reasonable to conclude that they disguised the truth from 
the Greek historian ; and, without mentioning the disgrace 
winch had befallen their country, and the interposition of 
a foreign power, attributed the change of the succession 
and the elevation of Amasis to the throne, solely to his am- 
bition and the choice of the Egyptian soldiery 

Josephus expressly states that the Babylonian monarch led 
an army into Coelo-Syria, of which he obtained possession, 
and then waged war on the Ammonites and Moabites. If 
Josephus be correct in this statement, there is reason to 
suppose that he alludes to Apries being deposed and suc- 
ceeded by Amasis, and we can readily imagine that the 
Babylonians, having extended their conquests to the ex- 
tremity of Palestine, would, on the increase of intestine 
commotion in Egypt, hasten to take advantage of the op- 
portunity thus afforded them of attacking the country. 
And the civil war and the fatal consequences appear to 

have been predicted by Isaiah (xix. 2, &c.) From 

a comparison of all these authorities, I conclude that the 
civil war between Apries and Amasis did not terminate in a 
single conflict, but lasted several years; and that either 
Amasis solicited the aid and intervention of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, or that this prince, availing himself of the dis- 
ordered state of the country, of his own accord invaded it, 
deposed the rightful sovereign, and placed Amasis on the 
throne, on condition of paying tribute to the Babylonians. 
The injury done to the lands and cities of Egypt by this 
invasion, and the disgrace with which the Egyptians felt 
themselves overwhelmed after such an event, would justify 
the account given in the Bible of the fall of Egypt, and to 
witness many of their compatriots taken captive to Baby- 
lon, and to become tributary to an enemy whom they held 
in abhorrence, would be considered by the Egyptians the 
greatest calamity, as though they had for ever lost then- 
station in the scale of nations." 



CTHAP. I.] 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



377 



BOOK V. 
THE REMNANT. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE CAPTIVITY. 



Before we enter upon the historical details 
of the period which now opens, it is proper to 
take a rapid survey of the principles deve- 
loped in the history through which we have 
passed, and to indicate the consequences 
which are exhibited in the portion that lies 
before us. 

In the second chapter of the first book we 
have stated, in general terms, the leading 
design of the selection of the Hebrew race, 
and of their settlement in the land of Canaan 
as a distinct and peculiar people, and se- 
parated from all other nations by the pecu- 
liar institutions which were given to them. 
That they were appointed to be " stewards of 
the mysteries of God " is the substance of the 
considerations stated there and enforced in 
subsequent passages. The history itself shows 
under what forms and obligations the ste- 
wardship was imposed, and how unfaithfully 
its duties were discharged ; and we are come 
to the punishments which that unfaithful- 
ness incurred. 

And did that unfaithfulness render the 
promises and designs of God of no effect? 
Nay, much otherwise : but rather tended to 
illustrate the more strongly his Almighti- 
ness, by the accomplishment of all his 
designs, in spite of, and even through, the 
reluctance, the improbity, and the treachery 
of the instruments he employed. They might 
have worked His high will with great happi- 
ness and honour to themselves ; but since 
they did not choose this, they were compelled 
to work that will even by their misery and 
dishonour. It was not in the power of the 
instruments to frustrate the intentions of 



Jehovah; they only had power to deter- 
mine whether that will should be accom- 
plished with happiness or with, misery to 
themselves, and, in consequence, somewhat 
to vary the mode in which those designs were 
exhibited and fulfilled. 

The main cause of the personal and 
national failure of the Israelites, as instru- 
ments of a design which was accomplished 
notwithstanding their misdoings, is by no 
means of difficult detection. Politically con- 
sidered, it may be resolved into what has 
been in all ages and countries the leading 
cause of calamity and miscarriage — a reliance 
upon men and upon individual character, 
which at best is but temporary and fluc- 
tuating, rather than upon institutions which 
are permanent and unchanging. In these, 
every needful amelioration is an abiding 
good ; whereas the existence of a good king, 
or judge, or priest, is at the most but " a 
fortunate accident," contingent on that most 
feeble thing, the breath of man. Nothing 
had been wanting to fortify their peculiar 
position by institutions admirably suited to 
their destined object, and made more im- 
pregnable by numerous sanctions and obliga- 
tions than any other institutions ever were, 
or indeed ever can, with any propriety, be 
made, by any authority short of that Infinite 
Wisdom by which the Hebrew institutions 
were established. Thus the nation was 
placed in the peculiarly advantageous posi- 
tion — which many enlightened nations have 
struggled for and sought after in vain — that 
their happiness, their prosperity, their liber- 
ties, were not dependent on the will of anv 



378 



men or set of men, but rested on firm insti- 
tutions which were as obligatory upon the 
chiefs of the land as upon the meanest of 
the people. 

But this was a new thing on the earth, 
and the Hebrew nation seemed utterly in- 
capable of appreciating its value ; and, 
indeed, what Oriental nation is there, at this 
advanced day, by which the value of so 
precious a gift would be duly appreciated ? 
They rested always on men; they always 
wanted leaders. And as they were led they 
followed : if their leaders were good and just 
men, they did well; if evil men, not well. 
They turned their back upon institutions, 
and threw themselves upon the accidents of 
human character: — and they fared accord- 
ingly. This preference occurs everywhere 
in the history of this people, and is with 
peculiar prominence evinced in their deter- 
mination to have " a king to rule them like 
the nations,'' in the ease with which Jero- 
boam was enabled to establish a schismatical 
worship in ten of the tribes, and in the 
facility with which, even in Judah, the 
people followed the examples offered by 
their kings. 

With reference to this point, the character 
so frequently given to Jeroboam when the 
sacred writers have occasion to mention his 
name, as " J eroboam, the son of Nebat, who 
sinned, and made Israel to sin" has always 
seemed to us frightfully emphatic and signi- 
ficant. 

Had the ancient Hebrews adhered to their 
institutions, it was impossible for them, as a 
political body, not to have fulfilled their 
special vocation in the world. But having, 
by the neglect of those institutions (which, 
among other benefits, secured the absence of 
idolatry and its concomitant vices), done all 
that in them lay to frustrate the very objects 
for the promotion of which existence had 
been given to them, they made it necessary 
that God should accomplish his own objects, 
not, as desired, by their welfare and by the 
confusion of their enemies, but by their 
misery and destitution. It was left Him to 
demonstrate his Almightiness— his supreme 
power— over all the " gods" which swarmed 
the world, not by overthrowing with his 



[book v. j 

strong hand all the enemies who rose against I 
them, and by maintaining them in the land | 
he had given them, against the old con- 
querors by whom great empires were thrown j 
down, but by making these very nations the 
instruments of his punishments upon the 
chosen people. And this was accomplished 
under such peculiar circumstances of mani- 
fest intention and instrumentality, that the 
conquerors themselves were brought to 
acknowledge the supremacy of Jehovah, and 
that they had been but the blind agents of 
his will. The strong and marked interference 
to prevent "the great kings" from engross- 
ing to themselves the merit or glory of their 
victories, and from despising the God of the 
people who, for their sins, had been abased 
at their footstool, even extorted from these 
proud monarchs the avowal that they had 
received all their crowns and all their king- 
doms from " the Most High God " whom the 
Hebrews worshipped. Now this and other 
results of the destitution of the Hebrews as 
strongly, and perhaps more strikingly, sub- 
served the great object of keeping^alive in 
the world the knowledge of a Supreme and 
Universal Governor and Creator, as by main- 
taining the Hebrews in Palestine. Indeed, 
that this great truth was diffused among, 
and impressed upon, the conquering nations 
by the captivity of the Hebrews— that " the 
Lord's song" was not sung utterly in vain 
in a strange land by the captives who wept 
when they remembered Zion, under the wil- 
lows and beside the waters of Babylon— in 
short, that they received some salt which 
kept them from utter putrefaction, some 
leaven which wrought vitally in them and 
prepared them for the revelations which the 
"fulness of times" produced — is evinced by 
the history of Daniel, by the edicts of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, of Darius, and, above all, of 
Cyrus ; and may even be traced in the tra- 
dition which ascribes the doctrines and im- 
portant reforms of Zoroaster to his inter- 
course with the Jewish captives and prophets 
at Babylon. 

Thus, although they had forfeited the 
high destiny of preserving and propagating 
certain truths as an independent and sove- 
reign people, the forfeiture extended only to 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. I.] 

'. their own position, for the truths intrusted 

! to them were still preserved and diffused 
through the instrumentality of their bond- 
age and punishment. This was true even in 

i the times posterior to their restoration to 

! their own land. 

We have been anxious to make these 
remarks, lest the facts of the history should 
seem to intimate that the Divine intention 

| in the establishment of the Hebrew com- 
monwealth was frustrated by the perversity 

j of the people which rendered the subversion 

| of that commonwealth necessary. Having, 
as we trust, shown that there is no room for 
this conclusion, it may seem better to reserve 
such further remarks as may tend to develope 
the spirit of the ensuing history, for the 
natural connection with the record of the 
circumstances in which they are involved. 
We now therefore proceed to record the 
captivities of Israel and of Judah. 

When Jerusalem was destroyed, one hun- 
dred and ninety-four years had elapsed since 
the Israelites of Galilee and Gilead had been 
led away captive into Assyria; one hundred 
and thirty-three years since Shalmaneser 
had removed the ten tribes to Halah and 
Habor by the river Gozan, and to Hara and 
other cities of Media ; and ten years since 
Nebuchadnezzar had banished some of the 
inhabitants of Jerusalem to the river of 
Chebar. The determination of the sites to 
which the Israelites were removed is a 
matter of some interest, but one which, in a 
work like the present, does not require any 
large investigation. The interest lies in the 
means thus given of determining the district 
to which the Israelites were expatriated ; 
and it is sufficient for us to state, that all 
the investigations which have yet been 
instituted, and all the information which 
has yet been acquired, concur in referring 
all these names (excepting, of course, the 
river Chebar) to that north-western part of 
the present Persian empire which formed 
the ancient Media. It is, indeed, remarkable 
that the only other cities whose names occur 
in the history of the captivity of the ten 
tribes, are linages and Ecbatana, which we 
know to have been important cities of 



379 

Media, in both of which it appears that the 
expatriated Israelites were settled in con- 
siderable numbers. 

Even this much it is important to learn ; 
because of itself it throws much light upon 
the policy of the Assyrian conquerors, and 
upon the position which the removed Israel- 
ites ultimately occupied. Media was then 
subject to the Assyrian empire, although 
still chiefly occupied by the native Medes ; it 
seems, therefore, to have been the policy of 
the Assyrians to remove the inhabitants of 
one conquered country to another conquered 
country, with the view of weakening the 
separate interest or nationality of both, and 
of promoting such a fusion of races and 
nations as might tend to realise tranquillity 
and permanence to the general empire. 
From this allocation of the expatriated 
Israelites in Media results the important 
fact that, whereas Judah was always subject 
to the conquering nation, Israel was only so 
for a short time, as the Medes, among whom 
they were placed, were not long in asserting 
their independence of Assyria, which empire 
they (with the Babylonians) ultimately sub- 
verted, and continued independent of the 
great Babylonian empire which succeeded, 
and to which the captives of Judah were 
subject. So, then, the relations of the ten 
tribes were with the Medes, not with the 
Assyrians or Babylonians ; and their relations 
with the Medes were not, and were necessa- 
rily far better than, those between captives 
and conquerors. It does not appear how the 
Medes could regard them, or that they did 
regard them, otherwise than as useful and 
respectable colonists whom the common 
oppressor had placed among them, and whose 
continued presence it was desirable to solicit 
and retain. It is hard to call this a captivity ; 
but since it is usually so described, it is 
important to remark that the captivity of 
the ten tribes and that of Judah was under 
different, and independent, and not always 
friendly, states. There is a vague notion 
that, since the Babylonians subverted and 
succeeded the Assyrians, the Israelites, who 
had been captives to the Assyrians, became 
such to the Babylonians, and were afterwards 
joined in that captivity by their brethren of 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



680 



Judah ; but this, as we have seen, was by no 
means the case. 

The information we possess respecting the 
condition of the ten tribes, before and after 
the fall of Jerusalem, is exceedingly scanty. 
It is certain that during the long years 
which passed before Judah also was carried 
into captivity, the expatriated Israelites 
fully participated in all the extravagant 
hopes of their brethren in Judah, and were 
looking with sanguine expectations for a 
speedy restoration to their own land; and 
the adverse prophecies and declarations of 
Ezekiel were as little heeded by them as 
those of Jeremiah were at Jerusalem. 

The apocryphal book of Tobit is the only 
source from which any information can be 
obtained as to the social position of the 
expatriated Israelites. We are certainly not 
among those who would like to repose much 
belief in "the stupid story of Tobias and his 
dog;" yet the framework of that story is so 
much in agreement with what we do know, 
and is so probable and natural in itself, that 
it would seem to have been "founded on 
facts," and to have been concocted by one 
who was intimately acquainted with the 
condition and affairs of the Israelites under 
the Assyrians. 

From this it would appep.r, that many of 
the captives were stationed at Nineveh itself, 
where they would seem to have lived much 
like other citizens, and were allowed to 
possess or acquire considerable wealth. 
Among these was Tobit, of the tribe and 
city of Napktali, a man who feared God, as 
doubtless many other of the captives did, 
and who, as far as in his power, squared his 
conduct by the rules and observances of the 
Mosaical law, and acquired such a character 
for probity, that the conqueror himself, 
Shalmaneser, took notice of him, and ap- 
pointed him his purveyor. This promotion 
of one of the expatriated Hebrews is signi- 
ficant in its indications, as it shows that, as 
afterwards with their brethren in Babylon, 
offices of importance and profit were, under 
the Assyrians, open to the ambition, or 
rewarded the good conduct, of the Israelites. 
Tobit availed himself of his position to visit 
his brother Israelites in other cities, to cheer 



[book v. « 

them, and to encourage their reasonable 
hopes and enterprises. He must have ac- 
quired considerable wealth, as he was enabled 
to deposit ten talents of silver * in the hands 
of Gabel of Rhages, in Media. That he did 
this may seem to imply that the captives ! 
stationed in Media were considered more ! 
securely circumstanced than those directly 
under the eye of the Assyrians. When 
Sennacherib returned from his signal over- 
throw in Palestine, he vented his ill-humour 
upon the Hebrew captives, and caused many 
of them to be put to death, and their bodies 
were cast forth, to remain unburied beyond 
the walls of Nineveh. This was very shock- 
ing to the pious Tobit, who made it a prac- 
tice to inter by night the bodies of his 
brethren whom he found unburied. The 
absence of the bodies occasioned inquiry, 
and the truth came to the knowledge of the 
tyrant, who would have put him to death; 
but the good man received timely warning, 
and made his escape from Nineveh. The 
tyrant himself was soon slain by his own 
sons; and (another marked instance of pro- 
motion) his successor, Esarhaddon, appointed 
Achiacharus, Tobit's nephew, to be his "cup- 
bearer, and keeper of the signet, and overseer 
of the accounts." Through this person Tobit 
received permission to return to Nineveh. 
But he was reduced to comparative poverty, 
and total blindness was soon after added to 
his misfortunes. His nephew, Achiacharus, 
was kind to the family under these circum- 
stances, until Tobit thought proper to remove 
into Elymais. There poverty was still their 
lot ; and they were supported chiefly by the 
wife, Anna, who took in " woman's work," 
and sometimes obtained presents from her 
employers above her actual earnings. 

At last Tobit, who had returned to Nine- 
veh, bethought him of the valuable property j 
he had left with Gabel at Rhages, and he 
sent his son to reclaim it, after giving him 
such instructions as shows that travelling 
was then, as almost ever since, dangerous in 
those countries. The romantic adventures 
of young Tobias on the journey form the 
most suspicious part of the book, perhaps 
the only suspicious part ; for which reason, 

* About 37-WI. 



THE BIBLE HISTOHY. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



381 



as well as because it affords none of the 
illustration we require, we willingly pass it 
by. It may suffice to state that Tobias 
pi-ospered in his journey. Tobit lived in 
Nineveh to the good old age of 158 years, 
and before his death foretold the approach- 
ing troubles of Assyria and the destruction 
of Nineveh, and that " for a time peace 
should rather be in Media," to which country 
he advised his son to withdraw. Tobias was 
mindful of this counsel, and withdrew to 
Ecbatana, where, in due time, he heard of 
the destruction of Nineveh by the combined 
forces of the Medes and Babylonians. 

We have already stated the inferences as 
to the condition of the expatriated Israelites 
which this narrative opens, although we 
have no information as to their condition 
after the fall of Nineveh and during the 
contemporary captivity of Judah. But there 
is every reason to conclude that their posi- 
tion under the Medes, when Media became 
an independent and well-governed state, was 
even less disadvantageous and unequal than 
it had been when that country was part of 
the Assyrian empire. 

We have brought the history of the king- 
dom of Judah down to the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the desolation of the country. 
But the history of the captivity must take 
us back to an earlier date, even to the time 
when Nebuchadnezzar spoiled the temple of 
its costly utensils, and sent away to Babylon 
a number of young princes and nobles as 
hostages for the fidelity of the people and 
their new king. This was eleven years be- 
fore the fall of Jerusalem. 

Among these captives were Daniel, and 
his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and 
Azariah. These, as tokens of their enslaved 
condition, received Chaldean names, more 
familiar than their own to the organs of the 
conquering people. Daniel was called Belte- 
shazzar ; Hananiah, Shadrach ; Mishael, Me- 
shach ; and Azariah, Abednego. These were, 
among others of the most promising of the 
youths, selected to be educated in the palace 
for three years, under the charge of the chief 
of the eunuchs, in the learning and.language 
of the Chaldeans, to qualify them for holding 



offices about the court and in the state. At 
the end of that time they were brought 
before the king to be examined as to their 
proficiency, when the young persons named 
were, in all matters of wisdom and under- 
standing, " found [to be] ten times 

better [informed] than all the magicians 
and astrologers that were in all his realm." 
They were accordingly admitted to a place 
in that learned body. 

Seventeen years after the destruction of 
Jerusalem, and the second year after the 
devastation of Egypt, when all his enemies 
were subdued on every side, and when his 
rule extended over many nations, Nebuchad- 
nezzar had a dream, which left a profound 
impression upon his mind, but the details of 
which he was unable to recover when he 
awoke. He therefore sent for all the magi 
and astrologers, requiring that by their 
occult skill and pretended influence with 
the gods, they should not only interpret but 
recover the dream he had lost. This they 
avowed themselves unable to do ; whereupon 
the enraged and disappointed king com- 
manded them to be massacred. Daniel and 
his friends were sought for, to be included 
in this doom; but Daniel, being informed of 
the cause, repaired to the royal presence, 
and promised that, if further time were 
allowed, he would undertake that the dream 
and an interpretation should be found. To 
this the king willingly agreed ; and the 
pious youths betook themselves to fasting 
and prayer, in the hope that God would 
enable them to satisfy the king's demand. 
Nor was their expectation disappointed. 
The matter was made known to Daniel in a 
vision. He was then enabled to remind the 
king that he had seen in his dream a com- 
pound image, and to inform him that this 
image represented " what should come to 
pass hereafter." In this compound image, 
the head of pure gold denoted Nebuchadnez- 
zar himself, and the succeeding kings of the 
Babylonian dynasty ; the breast and arms of 
silver, indicated the succeeding but inferior 
empire of the Medes and Persians ; the belly 
and thighs of brass, the next following empire 
of the Macedonians and the Greeks, whose 
arms were brass ; the legs of iron, and the toes 



382 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



[BOOK V. 



'partly iron and partly clay, referred to the 
Roman empire, which should be strong as 
iron, but the kiDgdoms into which it would 
ultimately subdivide, composed of heteroge- 
neous materials, which should be partly 
strong and partly weak ; and, lastly, the 
stoxe smiting the image and filling the whole 
earth, denoted the kingdom of Christ, which 
was to be set up upon the ruins of these 
temporal kingdoms and empires, and was 
destined to fill the whole earth, and to stand 
or continue for ever. " Thou art this head 
of gold," said the prophet to the king ; but 
he did not indicate the names and sources of 
the succeeding, and then non-existent, em- 
pires with equal distinctness. But we know 
them, not only tivm the order in which they 
succeed, and from the characters ascribed to 
them, but from the subsequent visions of 
Daniel himself, in which these empires are 
distinctly named, and by which the meaning 
of this primary vision is gradually unfolded, 
and which form together one grand chain 
of prophecy, extending to the end of time, 
and so clear and distinct, that as much of 
them (nearly the whole) as is already ful- 
filled, and which was once a shadowing forth 
of the future, reads like a condensed history 
of past ages. 

From the first, Daniel had disclaimed any 
peculiar pretensions to wisdom. " There is," 
he said, "a God in heaven that revealeth 
secrets;" and to Him he not only referred 
all the credit of the interpretation, but 
plainly told the king that it was to the 
appointments of this " God in heaven," who 
had the supreme disposal of all events, that 
he owed all the kingdoms which he ruled. 
Here was a grand instance of that testimony 
for Jehovah to which, when introducing 
this chapter, we had occasion to advert. The 
king was much struck by it, so that, while 
he prostrated himself before Daniel as before 
a superior, he acknowledged that the God 
who could enable him to reveal this great 
secret was indeed the God of gods and Lord 
of kings. Who does not see that it was for 
the purpose of impressing this conviction 
that the dream was given to him, the forget- 
fulness inflicted, and the interpretation be- 
stowed on Daniel ? 



Nebuchadnezzar was not slow in reward- 
ing the distinguished qualities which the 
prophet exhibited. He appointed him ruler 
over the whole province of Babylon, and, at 
the same time, " chief of the governors over 
all the wise men of Babylon" (Bab-Mag, or 
Archimagus, Jer. xxxix. 3), two of the 
highest civil and scientific offices in the 
state. At his request also, his three friends 
were appointed to conduct under him in the 
affairs of his provincial government, while 
he himself took a high place, if not the first 
place, in the civil councils of the king. 

The services of Daniel and his friends 
proved too valuable to be dispensed with; 
but mature deliberation disgusted the king 
at his dream and its interpretation, and his 
pride disposed him to retract the acknow- 
ledgment he had made of the supremacy of 
the God of a conquered people. It was, as 
we apprehend, under this influence that he 
erected a great image, of which not the head 
only, but the whole figure was of gold* to 
denote the continuance of his empire, in 
opposition to his dream; and it was dedi- 
cated to the tutelary god Bel, or Belus, 
whose power he now considered superior to 
that of the God of the Hebrews; whereby, 
in the most offensive manner, he revoked his 
former concession. All men were commanded 
to worship this, and no other god, on pain of 
death ; in consequence of which, the three 
friends of Daniel, who continued their wor- 
ship of Jehovah, with their faces turned 
towards Jerusalem, and took no notice of 
the golden image, were seized, and cast into 
an intensely-heated furnace. But by the 
special and manifest interposition of the God 
they served, they w r ere delivered without a 
hair of their heads being injured, by which 
fact the king, who was present, was con- 
strained to confess that the God of the 
Hebrews, who could after this sort deliver 
his people, was unquestionably superior to 
all others. 

* This was probably the statue of solid gold, twelve 
cubits high, which, according to Herodotus, stood in the 
temple of Belus, until it was taken away by Xerxes. The 
height mentioned by Daniel, sixty cubits, probably in- 
cluded the pedestal or pillar on which it stood, as otherwise 
its height would have been disproportionate to its breadth, 
six cubits. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



383 



Nebuchadnezzar manifestly was endowed 
i with many great and generous qualities; 
; but he was spoiled by prosperity, while, by 
the very aggrandisement which exalted his 
pride, he had been fixed in a position which 
made it necessary to the Divine glory that 
he should be brought to, and kept in, the 
acknowledgment that in all his acts he 
had been but an instrument in the hands of 
tho God worshipped by one of the nations 
which had received his yoke, and whose 
superiority at least, if not his unity, he was 
required to acknowledge. 

In another dream he was forewarned of 
the consequences of his excessive pride. This 
dream Daniel unflinchingly interpreted ; but 
w hatever effect it might produce was of no 
long duration. Twelve months after, while 
contemplating his extensive dominion and 
the splendour to which he had raised the 
great city of Babylon, his heart swelled with 
kingly pride, and he exclaimed, " Is not this 
great Babylon, that I have built for the 
house of the kingdom, by the might of my 
power, and for the honour of my majesty?" 
While these words were in his mouth, there 
fell a voice from heaven, saying, " king 
Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken — The 
kingdom is departed from thee. And they 
shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling 
shall be with the beasts of the field ; they 
shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and 
seven times (years) shall pass over thee, 
until thou know that the Most High ruleth in 
the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomso- 
ever he will." The thing was accomplished that 
very hour ; and in this sta<:e he remained until 
" his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, 
and his nails like birds' claws." The mean- 
ing of which seems to be that his proud 
mind was in that instant shattered, and fell 
into a kind of monomania, which made him 
fancy himself some animal ; in consequence 
of which it was judged necessary by his 
physicians to humour his fancy by treating 
him as such, and by allowing him within 
certain limits to act as such. The sequel 
canuot be more emphatically told than in 
his own words, as found in an edict, recount- 
ing these circumstances, which he issued on 
his recovery. " At the end of the days, I, 



Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto 
heaven, and mine understanding returned 
unto me, and I blessed the Most High, 
and I praised and honoured him that 
liveth for ever, whose dominion is an ever- 
lasting dominion, and his kingdom is from 
generation to generation. And all the in- 
habitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: 
and he doeth according to his will in the 
army of heaven, and among the inhabitants 
of the earth : and none can stay his hand, or 
say unto him, What doest thou? At the 
same time my reason returned unto me ; and 
for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour 
and brightness returned unto me; and my 
counsellors and my lords sougnt unto me ; 
and I was established in my kingdom, and 
excellent majesty was added unto me. Now 
I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, and extol, and 
honour, the King of heaven, all whose works 
are truth, and his ways judgment: and those 
that walk in pride he is able to abase" This 
noble acknowledgment demonstrates our 
former argument, that care was taken by 
Jehovah to maintain his own honour, and to 
secure his own great objects notwithstanding, 
and indeed through, that bondage to which 
sin had reduced his people. 

After a long reign of 43 years, Nebuchad- 
nezzar died in 561, and was succeeded by 
his son Evil-Merodach. A Jewish tradition* 
reports that this prince behaved so ill, by 
provoking a rupture with the Medes, during 
the distraction of his father, that Nebuchad- 
nezzar, on his recovery, threw him into 
prison ; and that he there became acquainted 
with, and interested in, Jehoiachim, the 
imprisoned king of Judah. However this 
be, it is certain that one of the first acts of 
his reign was to release Jehoiachim from his 
long imprisonment of thirty-seven years; 
and during the remainder of his life he 
treated him with much distinction and 
kindness, giving him a place at his court 
and table above all the other captive kings 
then in Babylon. As, however, the text 
implies that he died before his benefactor, 
who himself survived but three years, the 
Hebrew king could not long have outlived 
his release. Evil-Merodach was slain in a 

* Noticed by Jerome on Isa. xiv. 



384 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



battle against the united Medes and Persians, 
who by this time had become very powerful 
by their junction and intermarriages. The 
combined force was on this occasion com- 
manded by young Cyrus, who had already 
begun to distinguish himself, and who had 
been appointed to this command by his 
uncle and father-in-law Cyaxares — " Darius, 
the Mede" of Scripture — king of the Medes. 
This was in 558 B.C. 

Evil-Merodach was succeeded by his son 
Belshazzar. The end only of this monarch's 
reign is noticed in Scripture ; but Xenophon* 
gives instances of his earlier conduct in the 
throne, of which only a barbarous and jealous 
tyrant could have been capable. His last 
and most heinous offence was the profanation 
of the sacred vessels belonging to the Jeru- 
salem temple, which his illustrious grand- 
father, and even his incapable father, had 
respected. Having made a great feast " to 
a thousand of his lords," he ordered the 
sacred vessels to be brought, that he and his 
wassailers might drink wine from them. 
That there was an intentional insult to the 
Most High in this act, transpires in the 
narrative : — " They praised the gods of gold, 
and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and 
of stone;" but The God in whose hand was 
their breath, and whose were all their ways, 
they praised or glorified not. Indeed, to 
appreciate fully this act and its consequences, 
it is indispensably necessary that the mind 
should revert to the operations by which the 
supremacy of Jehovah, was impressed upon 
Nebuchadnezzar — operations not hid in a 
corner ; and which, together with the public 
confessions and declarations of this conviction 
which were extorted from that magnanimous 
king, must have diffused much formal 
acquaintance with the name and claims of 
Jehovah among the Babylonians, with which 
also the royal family must have been in a 
peculiar degree familiar, not only through 
these circumstances, but through Daniel, 
who had occupied high rank at court in the 
still recent reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and 
whose mere presence must constantly have 
suggested the means to which his advance- 
ment was owing. From this it will be seen 

* ' Cyrop.' i. 4. 



that, on the principle of operation which we 
have indicated in the early part of this 
chapter, the time was now come for another 
act whereby Jehovah might vindicate the 
honour of his own great Name, and enforce 
his peculiar and exclusive claims to the 
homage of mankind. 

Suddenly a mysterious hand appeared, 
writing conspicuously upon the wall words 
of ominous import, but which no one could 
understand; for, although they were in the 
vernacular Chaldean language, the character 
in which they were written was the primitive 
old Hebrew, which differed totally from the 
Chaldee, and was the original from which 
that which is called the Samaritan character 
was formed. The king himself was greatly 
agitated, and commanded the instant at- 
tendance of the magi and astrologers. They 
came, but were utterly unable to divine the 
meaning of the portentous words upon the 
wall. This increased the terror of the im- 
pious king, which was at its height when 
the queen-mother, or rather grand-mother* 
made her appearance. She soothed the 
troubled monarch, and reminded him of the 
services and character of Daniel ; indicating 
him as one "in whom is the spirit of The 
Holy Goi> ; and in the days of thy grand- 
father light and understanding and wisdom, 
like the wisdom of the gods, was found in 
him;" and therefore one who was likely to 
afford Belshazzar the satisfaction which he 
sought. It was probably the custom at 
Babylon (as with respect to the correspond- 
ing officer in other Oriental courts) for the 
archimagus to lose his office on the death 
of the king to whose court he was attached; 
and that, consequently, Daniel had with- 
drawn into private life on the death of 
Nebuchadnezzar. This will explain how the 
king needed to be reminded of him, and how 
the prophet was in the first instance absent 
from among those who were called to inter- 
pret the writing on the wail. 

Daniel was sent for : aud when he ap- 
peared, the king repeated what he had heaifl 
of him; stated the inability of the magicians 

* So she is called by Josephus, *> pappr, ccvrev, indeed, 
the part she took on this occasion is so probable of no one 
as of the widow of Xebuchadnezzar. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



385 



to interpret the portentous words ; and pro- 
mised him, as the reward of interpretation, 
that he should be clad in scarlet, with a 
chain of gold about his neck, and that he 
should rank as the third person in the 
kingdom The venerable prophet modestly 
waived the proffered honours and rewards, as 
having no weight to induce his compliance: — 
"Thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy re- 
wards to another; yet I will read the writing 
unto the king." But, first, he undauntedly 
reminded the king of the experience, and 
resulting convictions of his renowned grand- 
father, adding, with emphasis, "And thou, 
his grandson, Belshazzar, hast not humbled 
thine heart, though thou knowest all this." 
He then read the inscription : — • 
a MENEj MENE, TEKEL, [PERES], 
Number, Number, Weight, [Division] 

UPHARSIX." 

and Divisions, 
and proceeded to give the interpretation : — 
u Meke, God hath numbered thy kingdom, 
and 

"[Mete], finished it*. 

tt Tekel, Thou art weighed in the balances, 
and art found wanting. 

"Peres, Thy kingdom is divided. 

" Upharsln", And given to the Medes and 
Persians" [Darius and Cyrus]. 

The king heard this terrible sentence : but 
made no remark further than to command 
that Daniel should be invested with the pro- 
mised scarlet robe and golden chain, and 
that the third rank in the kingdom should 
be assigned to him. 

The sacred historian adds, with great con- 
ciseness, " In that night was Belshazzar, the 
king of the Chaldeans, slain." How, we are 
not told: but we may collect from Xenophonf 
that he was slain through the conspiracy of 
two nobles, on whom he had inflicted the 
greatest indignities which men could receive. 
This was in 553 B.C., in the fifth year of his 
reign. 

He was succeeded by his son, a boy, named 
Laborosoarchodt; but as he was put out of 

* The repetition merely giving emphasis to the signifi- 
cation, indicating its certainty and speedy accomplishment, 
t ' Cyrop.' lib. vii. 
% Joseph, cont. Apion, i. 20. 



the way in less than a year, he is passed over 
in Ptolemy's Canon, as well as in the Sacred 
history, which relates that, as following the 
death of Belshazzar, "Darius the Mede 
took the kingdom." In fact, the family of 
Nebuchadnezzar being extinct, Cyaxares, or 
(to give him his Scriptural name) Darius, 
who was brother to the queen-mother, and 
the next of kin by her side to the crown, had 
the most obvious right to the vacant throne ; 
and while his power was so great as to over- 
awe all competition, the express indication of 
him by the prophet in his interpretation of 
the inscription was calculated to have much 
weight with all concerned, and indeed with 
the whole nation. 

Daniel, naturally, came into high favour 
with Darius, to whose accession he had so 
materially contributed. On making out new 
appointments of the governors of provinces, 
the prophet was set over them all: and the 
king contemplated a still further elevation 
for him. This excited the dislike and jea- 
lousy of the native princes and presidents, 
who determined to work his ruin. In his 
administration, his hands were so pure, that 
no ground of accusation could be found 
against him. They therefore devised a plan 
by which Daniel's known and tried fidelity 
to his religion should work his destruction. 
They procured from the careless and vain 
king a decree, that no one should for thirty 
days offer any prayer or petition to any god 
or man save the king himself, under pain of 
being cast into the lion's den. The king at 
once became painfully conscious of his weak 
and criminal conduct, when his most trusted 
servant, Daniel, was accused before him as 
an open transgressor of this decree, and his 
punishment demanded. Among the Medes 
and Persians there was a singular restraint 
upon despotism — which, while at the first 
view it seemed to give intensity to the exer- 
cise of despotic power, really tended to deter 
the kings from hasty and ill-considered de- 
cisions, by compelling them to feel the evil 
consequences with which they were attended. 
The king's word was irrevocable law. He 
could not himself dispense with the conse- 
quences of his own acts. Of this Darius was 
reminded; and he saw at once that he was 



386 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book Y. 



precluded from interfering in behalf of his 
friend. It is a beautiful illustration of the 
great truth, which appears as the main argu- 
ment of this chapter, namely, that the glory 
of God was promoted among the heathen by 
the captivity of his people, — that the king 
himself was already so well acquainted with 
the character and power of Jehoyah, that 
he spontaneously rested himself upon the 
hope, that, although unable himself to de- 
liver him from this well-laid snare, the God 
whom Daniel served would certainly not 
suffer him to perish. The prophet was cast 
into the lion's den, and the mouth thereof 
was closed with a sealed stone. The king 
spent the night sleepless and in sorrow. 
Impelled by his vague hopes, he hastened 
early in the morning to the cavern, and 
cried in a doleful voice, u Daniel, servant 
of The Living God, is thy God, whom thou 
servest continually, able to deliver thee 
from the lions 1 " To the unutterable joy and 
astonishment of the king, the quiet voice of 
Daniel returned an affirmative answer, assur- 
ing the king of his perfect safety. Instantly 
the cavern was opened, the servant of God 
drawn forth, and his accusers were cast in, 
and immediately destroyed by the savage 
inmates of the den. This striking interposi- 
tion induced the king to issue a proclamation, 
to the same ultimate effect as that which 
Nebuchadnezzar had issued in a former time. 
He wrote unto "all peoples, nations, and lan- 
guages, that dwell in all the earth," charging 
them to " tremble and fear before the God of 
Daniel; for he is The Living God, and stead- 
fast for ever, and his kingdom that which 
shall not be destroyed, and his dominion 
shall be even unto the end." It would not 
be easy to overrate the importance of the 
diffusion of such truths as these through the 
length and breadth of the Median empire. 

It was the established policy of the Medes 
and Persians to conciliate the good will of 
the subject states, by leaving the practical 
government in the hands of native princes. 
Darius, therefore, as we may collect from 
Berosus, appointed Nabonadius, a Babylonian 
noble, unconnected with the royal family, 
to be viceroy, or king, under him. This 
appointment was confirmed or continued 



by Cyrus, when he succeeded to the general 
empire on the death of his uncle, in 551 b.c. 

During the first years of his reign, Cyrus 
was too much occupied in foreign wars to 
pay much attention to Babylon ; and this 
gave Nabonadius an opportunity to assert his 
independence, and to maintain it until the 
hero was at leisure to call him to account. 
This was not until 538 B.C., when this great 
prince marched against Babylon with the 
determination to crown his many victories 
by its reduction. Nabonaditii, on his part, 
seems to have been encouraged by his di- 
viners* to repose much confidence in his 
own resources, and in the stability of the 
kingdom he had established. He ventured 
to meet the Persian army on its advance 
towards the city, but was defeated in a 
pitched battle, and driven back to abide 
a siege within the walls of Babylon. Still 
all was not lost, for not only was the city 
strongly fortified, but a siege by blockade 
was likely to be indefinitely protracted, as 
the town not only possessed immense store? 
of provisions, but the consumption of them 
would be greatly lessened by means of the 
large open spaces within the city, in which 
all kinds of produce could be raised to a 
considerable extent. In fact, the siege 
continued for two years, and Babylon was 
then only taken by a remarkable stratagem. 
Cyrus observed that the town lay the most 
exposed on the side of the river, and there- 
fore he caused a new bed to be dug for its 
waters ; and at an appointed time, by night, 
the dykes were cut, and the Euphrates rolled 
its humbled stream into this new channel; 
and the old one, left dry, offered a free 
passage to the exulting Persians. Even yet, 
however, their condition, in the bed of the 
river, might have been perilous, and a vi- 
gilant enemy might have surprised them as 
in a net ; but that night a public festival 
was celebrated in Babylon, and all there was 
confusion and drunkenness. From this, as 
well as from the little reason to apprehend 
danger on that side, the gates leading from 
the quays into the city were that night left 
open, so that an easy and unopposed access 
was offered to the army of Cyrus, and the 

* I sa. x!iv. 25. 



CHAP. I.] 



THE CAPTIVITY. 



387 



king was horror-struck and paralysed, as 
successive messengers arrived in haste from 
the various distant quarters of the city, to 
inform him that the Persians had entered 
there, and thus to learn, that, at both ex- 
tremities at once, great Babylon was taken, 
536 b.c. 

Daniel was still alive, and there is evidence 
that Cyrus knew and valued his character. 
The apocryphal history of Bel and Dragon 
says that Cyrus conversed much with him, 
and honoured him above all his friends. 
But we have better evidence in effects which, 
seeing Daniel still lived, may very safely be, 
in some degree, referred to the instruction 
and counsel which the now very aged prophet 
was able to give. 

There is an important and most striking 
prophecy by Isaiah*, in which Cyrus is men- 
tioned by name, and his exploits predicted, 
more than a century before his birth. To him 
it is expressly addressed, and in terms of ten- 
derness and respect, which were never, in any 
other instance, applied to an heathen — if it 
be just to apply that name to Cyrus. In this 
splendid prophecy Jehovah calls Cyrus " my 
shepherd, who shall perform all my pleasure;" 
and "mine anointed." His victories are fore- 
told, and ascribed to Jehovah ; and, in a par- 
ticular manner, the taking of Babylon by him 
is foreshown, even to the indication of the 
very peculiar manner in which that conquest 
was achieved. And the object of all this— 
of his existence, of his acts, and even of this 
prophecy concerning him and them,— is de- 
clared, with marked emphasis, to be, that he 
may be in a condition to restore the captivity 
of J udah, and that such convictions might be 
wrought in him as might incline him to fulfil 
this his vocation +, and to become acquainted 

* Isa. xliv. 24, to xlv. 6. 

t " Thus saith Jehovah of his anointed,— 

Of Cyrus, whose right hand I hold fast, 

That I may subdue nations before him, 

And ungird the loins of kings; 

That 1 may open before him the valve3, 

And the gates shall not be shut. 

I myself will rrkrch on before thee, 

And will make the crooked places straight. 

The valves of brass will I break asunder, 

And the bars of iron will I hew down. 

And I will give to thee the treasures of darkness, 

And stores deeply hid in secret plaees; 

That thou mayest knmv that I, Jehovah, 



with the supreme and sole power of Jehovah. 
And the careful reader will not fail to note 
in this sublime address to one destined to 
live in a future generation, not only a 
clear assertion of the unity of God, and his 
universal power and providence, but a dis- 
tinct blow at the peculiar superstition of 
Cyrus and his people — which consisted in 
the adoration of two principles — the good 
and evil, represented by light and darkness. 
Hence the emphasis of — - 

" I form the light, and create darkness ; 
I make peace, and create evil." 

We can easily imagine the impression 
which the perusal of these prophecies would 
make upon the ingenuous mind of this great 
man, accompanied by the explanations which 
Daniel could pour into his willing ears, and 
with the further intimation, collected from 
the prophecies of Jeremiah respecting the 
seventy years of the captivity, that the time 
of the restoration was then arrived, and him- 
self the long pre-determined instrument of 
giving effect to the Divine intention. His 
consciousness of all this is evinced in the 
proclamation, which he issued the same year 
that Babylon was taken. This proclamation 
is to be regarded as the final acknowledg- 
ment from the conquering foreign kings of 
the supremacy of Jehovah, and it was most 
interesting from the distinctness with which 

this acknowledgment is conveyed, " Thus 

saith Cyrus king of Persia,— Jehovah, the 
God of the heavens, hath given me all the 
kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged 
me to build him an house at Jerusalem, 
which is in Judah."! In this he manifestly 
alludes to the charge conveyed in the pro- 
phecy — i 



That call thee by name, am the God of Israel. 
For the sake of Jacob my servant, 
And of Israel my chosen one, 
I have even called thee by name .• 
I have surnamed thee, yet Me thou knowest not. 
I am Jehovah, and there is none else: 
There is no God besides me. 
I girded thee though thou hast not known me ; 
That they may know, from the rising of the sun, 
And from the west, that there is none beside me. ' 
I am Jehovah, and there is none else: 
I form the lis;ht and create darkness, 
I make peace, and create evil. 
I, J ehovah, do all these things. 
$ Ezra, i. 2. 



C C 2 



388 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



"Who [Jehovah] saith of Cyrus, He ia my 

shepherd ! 
And he shall perform all my pleasure ; 
Even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be 

built ; 

To the temple, Thy foundations shall he 
laid." 

Accordingly, the proclamation proceeded 
not only to grant free permission for such 
of the seed of Abraham as thought proper 
to return to their own land, but also com- 
manded the authorities of the places in which 
they lived to afford every facility to their re- 
migration. 

Before accompanying them on their return, 
it may be well to contemplate the results of 
the circumstances which have been related, 
as affecting the position of the captive J ews 
during the period through which we have 
passed. 

There is certainly nothing to suggest that 
their condition was one of abject wretched- 
ness. This is in some degree shown by the 
high offices enjoyed by Daniel and his three 
friends ; and by the distinction conferred 
upon king Jehoiachim by Evil-Merodach. 
He not only enjoyed the first rank over all 
the kings then at Babylon, but ate at the 
table of the monarch, and received allow- 
ances corresponding to his rank. While 
these circumstances of honour must have 
reflected a degree of dignity on the exiles, 
sufficient to protect them from being ill- 
treated or despised; we see that there was 
always some person of their nation high in 
favour and influence at court, able to protect 
them from wrong, and probably to secure 
for them important and peculiar privileges. 
They, most likely, came to be considered 
as respectable colonists, enjoying the pecu- 



liar protection of the sovereign. Although 
Jehoiachim did not long survive his release 
from prison, his son Salathiel, and his grand- 
son, Zerubbabel, undoubtedly partook in and 
succeeded to the respect which he received. 
If the story in the apocryphal book of Esdras*, 
of the discussion before Darius, in which 
Zerubbabel won the prize, be a mere fiction, 
it is still at least probable that the young 
prince, although he held no office, had free 
access to the court ; which privilege must 
have afforded him many opportunities of 
alleviating the condition of his countrymen. 
It is even not improbable that (as is implied 
in the apocryphal story of Susannah, and as 
the tradition of the Jews affirm,) the exiles 
had magistrates and a prince from their own 
number. Jehoiachim, and after him Salathiel 
and Zerubbabel, might have been regarded 
as their princes, in the same manner as 
Jozadak and Jeshua were as their high- 
priests. 

At the same time it cannot be denied that 
their humiliation, as a people punished by 
their God, was always extremely painful, 
and frequently drew on them expressions of 
contempt. The peculiarities of their religion 
afforded many opportunities for the ridicule 
and scorn of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, 
— a striking example of which is given in 
the profanation of the sacred vessels by Bel- 
shazzar. By such insults they were made to 
feel so much the more sensibly the loss of 
their houses, their gardens, and fruitful fields; 
the leaving of their capital and temple, and 
the cessation of the public solemnities of their 
religion f. 

* 1 Esd. iii. 4. 

t See Jahn, theil li. band 1, sect. 45, ' Zustand der 
Hebraer in dem Exilium.' 



CHAP. II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



389 



CHAPTER II. 
THE RESTORATION. 



We consider the great argument of the pre- I 
ceding chapter to have been, that the honour 
of Jehovah was as adequately maintained, 
and the knowledge of his claim to be the 
supreme and only God to have been even 
more diffused, by the destitution of the He- 
brews, than it would ever have been by their 
continuance in their own land. It also ap- 
j jars very clearly to us that, by a succession 
of such operations as those which elicited the 
public acknowledgments of Nebuchadnezzar, 
Darius and Cyrus, and by acts which could 
not but be known to many nations, these 
objects might have been promoted as well 
without as by the restoration of the Hebrew 
people to their own land, and the re-establish- 
ment of the temple service. It may then 
be asked, why it was expedient that Judah 
should be at all restored ; and, being re- 
stored, why Israel — the ten tribes — were not? 
These interesting questions we cannot discuss 
to the extent which they deserve ; but we 
may suggest, that since, by immutable pro- 
mises, the privilege had been secured to the 
seed of Abraham of upholding the standard 
of divine truth in the world, until "the ful- 
ness of times," and since the nationality of 
Judah until then had been anciently secured 
by the guarantee of the Lord's promise, — it 
was necessary that a restricted restoration, 
after punishment and correction, should for 
these purposes take place. This was all the 
more necessary, as it was from Judah and 
from the royal house of David that, as was 
well known, He was to spring who was to en- 
lighten and redeem the world, and to bring 
in that new creation for which the moral 
universe groaned as the times advanced to 
their completion. For his identity, as the 
Ransomer promised of old, it was necessary 
that the dying struggles of the Hebrew 
nationality should not be yet permitted to 
terminate. And further, inasmuch as the 



bondage of the Hebrews east of the Euphrates 
had tended in no small degree to advance in 
that quarter the knowledge of the great pre- 
paratory principles of which the Jews were 
the commissioned conservators, it remained 
for the west to be in like manner allowed 
to catch such glimmerings of light, as might 
make the nations impatient of their blind- 
ness, and prepare them to hail with glad- 
ness the future "day-spring from on high." 
And this was, in fact, accomplished by the 
intercourse of the Hebrews with the western 
nations — Egypt, Syria, Asia-Minor, Greece, 
Rome — in subjection, in conflicts, or in com- 
merce. 

That Judah was preferred to this vocation, 
and that the Ten Tribes were not nationally 
or formally restored, must be accounted for 
by the further development of a consideration 
to which the reader's attention was called in 
the preceding chapter. The political sins of 
Judah were there traced to the disposition 
to lean rather upon men than upon institu- 
tions. The sin of Israel was even greater, 
and merited greater severity of punishment. 
There, not only was the same disposition ex- 
hibited, but the institutions themselves were 
corrupted, alienated, tortured from the ob- 
jects for which they were expressly framed, 
and, with most culpable- ingenuity, made sub- 
servient to the very circumstances against 
which they were designed to operate. In 
Judah, the building of God was indeed often 
neglected, often allowed to run to ruin ; but 
it was not, as in Israel, made the abiding 
habitation of unclean and evil things. In 
Judah, a good king could purge out abuses 
and corrupt evils ; but in Israel the tamper- 
ing with institutions was so effective, that 
the best kings were unable to lay an im- 
proving finger on them. For these things 
Israel was thrown loose from the mercies of 
God much sooner than Judah ; and the evil 



390 



THE BIBJE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



had been so heinous and deeply rooted, that 
no promise or hope of restoration was held 
forth, nor did any take - ^ace. 

By the attention whirh, through the cap- 
tivity and consequent dispersion of the Jews 
among what was then (if we except Egypt) 
the most civilized nation of the world, had 
been directed to the majesty and providence 
of Jehovah, we consider that a very im- 
portant part of the mission confided to the 
Hebrews was accomplished; for an impres- 
sion was made, the effects of which may 
without difficulty be traced to the time of 
Christ, and, therefore, we are thus brought 
to a sort of end in the national history of the 
Hebrew people. Undoubtedly, the real fall 
of Jerusalem was that which was wrought 
by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar; the real 
destruction was that which the Assyrians 
worked in the north, and the Babylonians 
in the south ; and the real dispersion of the 
race was that which took place in conse- 
quence of the Assyrian and Babylonian cap- 
tivities. A remnant only was preserved, as 
necessary for the remaining objects which 
have just been indicated ; and it is the his- 
tory of that Remnant which forms the sub- 
ject of the present book. 

^ It is unquestionable that this remnant was 
highly fitted for its vocation. The large mass 
of the Israelites were natives of the land of 
their exile, in which they were for the most 
part so comfortably situated that only those 
whose religious zeal and sentiments were 
above the average warmth, would be likely 
to, or did, encounter the dangers of the de- 
sert and the inconveniences and anxieties of 
an unsettled country. The circumstances of 
the re-migration were in fact such as to at- 
tract only those who were in the soundest 
state of moral health. They were also cured 
of all danger of idolatry, and of all disposi- 
tion to make light of their own institutions. 
That the Hebrews as a body profited largely 
by the correction which they had received, 
is unquestionable— so largely indeed, that,' 
under temptations as great as any to which 
they had in former times yielded, idolatry 
was ever after their abhorrence. And indeed 
if, during the period of the Captivity, the 
proudest heathen were made so seriously at- 



tentive to the God of Israel, much more were 
the Hebrews likely to be awakened by the 
same events to be true to their own God. On 
this point we copy the remarks of Professor 
J ahn : — 

" Among the Hebrews who, agreeably to 
the sanctions of the law, were punished for 
idolatry by total banishment from their 
native land, there were certainly many who 
did not worship idols ; and probably not a 
few, in consequence of this national judg- 
ment, so often predicted, were brought to re- 
flect on and to abhor the superstition which 
had been the cause of so great a calamity. 
Others, not wholly relinquishing idolatry, still 
retained a reverence for Jehovah. They 
never, like other transplanted nations, inter- 
mingled with the people among whom they 
were settled, but continued a peculiar race. 
There were doubtless individual exceptions ; 
but the nation as such remained distinct. 
The intermingling with pagans, and that en- 
tire extinction of the Hebrews as a peculiar 
people which must have resulted from it, 
was prevented by the rite of circumcision, 
by the prohibition of many kinds of food 
allowed among other nations, by ceremonial 
impurities, and by various other institutions, 
designed to segregate and consequently to 
preserve the nation. These usages had by 
time become a second nature, so that any in- 
timate connection with Gentiles was a matter 
of considerable difficulty. The ancient fa- 
vours of J ehovah, the miraculous deliverances 
which he had vouchsafed exclusively to them, 
and the promises he had given them for fu- 
turity, were not easily forgotten. The ful- 
filment of so many prophecies respecting the 
fall of the Assyrian empire and of the city of 
Nineveh, respecting the Babylonian captivity 
and the destruction of Jerusalem, must have 
raised Jehovah in their eyes far above all 
idols ; and the very punishment they were 
then suffering was well calculated to awaken 
reflection, and thus become a bitter but 
powerful antidote to their propensity to idol- 
atry. Many Israelites, therefore, in Assyria 
and Media (as the book of Tobit testifies) 
persisted in the sincere worship of Jehovah ; 
neither could the Jews in Babylon, and those 
by the river Chebar, fall easily into idolatry, 



IAP. II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



391 



hile such men as Ezekiel and Daniel were 
mstantly and earnestly reminding them of 
le God whom they were bound to serve. 
" The prophecies of Ezekiel, relating for 
ae most part to events near at hand, were 
ccomplished before the eyes of the unbe- 
.eving exiles ; and every fulfilment was a 
ew proof that Jehovah, the author of these 
redictions, was the God and ruler of the 
rorld. Thus there were repeated opportu- 
.ities to remind this superstitious people 
f Jehovah their God. The remarkable pro- 
•hecy respecting the conquest and destruc- 
tion of the powerful city Tyre, which was so 
speedily accomplished, is particularly worthy 
of notice. By such striking accomplishments 
of the prophecies respecting occurrences near 
at hand, the belief of predictions of more dis- 
tant events was strengthened, and the eyes of 
the Hebrews were eagerly directed towards 
the future. 

" Thus, and through the deliverance which 
J ehovah wrought in behalf of his persecuted 
servants, — and through the acknowledgments 
which were extorted from the pagan monarchs 
under whose yoke the necks of Israel and 
Judah were placed, — £ God pursued them (so 
to speak) with the efficacious dealings of his 
providence, with miracles and prophecies, in 
order to compel them to preserve the true 
religion, and to place them in a situation in 
which it would hardly be possible for them 
to exchange the worship of the Creator and 
Governor of the world for the worship of idols. 
By the prophet Ezekiel*, Jehovah declares 
in so many words, that even if the Hebrews 
desired to become united with the heathen, 
it should not be done ; and that he would 
himself find means effectually to prevent the 
execution of such a design.' "f 

That the restoration to Palestine, which 
now took place, is, at least primarily, that of 
which the prophets delivered such glowing 
predictions, very few who carefully examine 
the subject will find reason to doubt. The 
more closely the matter is examined, the 
more clearly the details of the prophecy 
will be found to agree with this fulfilment. 
We are quite aware that the large terms and 

* Ezek. xx. 32—44. 

1 Jahn, ii. 1, sect. 53, Ruckkehr der zehen Stamme. 



forcible expressions employed by the prophets 
have led all the Jews and many Christians 
into the expectant. \ of a more brilliant and 
complete restoration than on this occasion 
took place. Our undertaking is, however, to 
record past events rather than to furnish 
the development of prophecies which may 
be deemed unfulfilled. That these prophe- 
cies have a further meaning beyond the 
literal and primary purport, we take to be 
evinced not only by the glowing language 
employed, but by the present condition of 
the Hebrew nation, " like a column left 
standing amid the wreck of worlds and the 
ruins of nature," % in which they manifestly 
remain awaiting destinies yet to come ; but 
that these destinies include the restoration 
and independent and happy settlement of 
the nation in Palestine, we hold to be con- 
siderably less certain and less important than 
has of late years been made to appear. 

Now, by the decree of Cyrus, the mountains 
were made low and the valleys filled for the 
return of the Hebrews to their own land. 
But seeing that only the two tribes of Judah 
and Benjamin — conventionally regarded as 
one tribe — formally returned to Palestine, 
it becomes an interesting question, What 
became of the other Ten Tribes 1 

As the invitation of Cyrus was directed to 
all the people of Jehovah, and proclaimed 
throughout his empire, there is every reason 
to conclude that not a few of the ten tribes 
returned to Palestine. Those who supposed 
they could improve their condition by re- 
moving, would attach themselves here and 
there to a caravan of merchants, and pro- 
ceed to the land of their fathers. But as 
they arrived one after another, and in small 
companies, their return is not particularly 
noticed in a history so concise. There might 
even have been many Israelites in the first 
great caravan under Zerabbabel; but, how- 
ever this, may be, it is highly probable that 
the Israelites returned in considerable num- 
bers, as soon as they heard of the settle- 
ment and the prosperity of their brethren 
in Palestine. Most of these arrivals were 
probably subsequent to the close of the Old 
Testament canonical history, and when the 

% ' Trans, of the Parisian Sanhedrim,' p. 68. 1807. 



392 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOX V- 



restored nation had acquired a somewhat 
settled form. But whether their return 
were early or late, it is certain that at least 
a portion of them did return, for the history 
of later periods mentions Israelites as settled 
in Galilee and Persea* long before the time 
of Christ. But connecting themselves with 
the tribe of Judah, they finally lost the 
name of Israelites, and all Hebrews were 
indiscriminately designated as Jews. 

But since many of the tribe of Judah 
chose to remain in the land of their exile, 
it is reasonable to suppose that still greater 
numbers of the Israelites who had lived in 
those countries 200 years longer, would feel 
little inclination to exchange the comforts 
which they there enjoyed for the uncertain 
advantages of Palestine. But as the jealousy 
between Judah and Israel had now ceased, 
according to the predictions of the prophets, 
those Israelites also who remained in exile 
joined themselves to the tribe of Judah, 
which was in possession of the temple, and, 
consequently, they too received the deno- 
mination of Jews. 

On these grounds Professor Jahn con- 
ceives that all questions and investigations 
for the purpose of ascertaining what has be- 
come of the Ten Tribes, and whether it is 
likely they will ever be discovered, are su- 
perfluous and idle. We are not ourselves 
quite so clear that this is the case. We 
grant, indeed, that there is no good reason 
for expecting to find the remnant of the ten 
tribes as distinct from the remnant of Judah; 
but that traces of the Hebrews of both cap- 
tivities, without distinction of tribes, may be 
found in the countries in which they were 
so long located, there is much reason to con- 
clude. We say in those countries, for the 
reasons which prevented them from return- 
ing to Palestine were as operative in pre- 
venting their migration in any other direc- 
tion. Indeed, while the second temple stood, 
one would expect that such of them as were 
disposed to migrate at all, would return to 
the land of their fathers, as many of them, 
no doubt, did. But, apart from this pre- 
ference, there was much reason for their 
remaining in Media; for the empire which 

* 1 Mac. v. 9—24. 



comprehended that country continued long 
to be possessed by a nation which was quite 
able to protect them and make their homes 
secure ; while the religion which it professed 
was more in agreement with that of Moses, 
and less revolting to the peculiar notions of 
the Hebrews, than any other they could find 
in the world. It is certain also, that for a 
long course of ages a large remnant of the 
captivity of Judah remained in Babylonia, 
and this so much composed of the elite of the 
nation as to secure the respect of the Jews 
who returned to Palestine and multiplied 
there — all traces of which estimation of the 
Babylonian Jews is not even at this day 
wholly obliterated ; and this fact would sug- 
gest the probability of a similar local fixity 
of the ten tribes in Media and Assyria. 
Indeed the probability is the greater, from 
the fact that in those countries, as history 
proves, they would be much less liable to 
be disturbed by wars and troubles than the 
Jews of Babylonia. It is probably, under 
such a class of impressions, that the Jews 
themselves have generally been disposed to 
look for traces of the ten tribes in that di- 
rection. Nor, as it would appear, has the 
search been quite abortive. 

In the twelfth century of Christ, the dis- 
trict of Halah, mentioned at p. 379, was 
visited by the Spanish Jew, Benjamin of 
Tudela. After speaking of large congrega- 
tions of Jews in this quarter, he comes to 
Amaria [which Major Rawlinson regards as 
the same as Halah, now Holwan], where 
he found 25,000 Jews. " This congregation 
forms part of those," says Rabbi Benjamin, 
"who live in the mountains of Chaphton, 
which amount to more than 100, extending 
to the frontiers of Media. These Jews are 
descendants of those who were originally led 
into captivity by king Shalmaneser. They 
speak the Syriac language, and among them 
are many excellent talmudic scholars." f 
Benjamin then gives the history of the false 
Messiah, David El Roy, who sprang from the 
city of Amaria, and whose romantic history 
has been made familiar to the English Dublic 
by Mr. D 'Israeli. 

f ' The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.' 
Translated and edited by A. Asher. Berlin, 1840. 



CHAP. II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



393 



More recently, the Rabbi David D'Beth 
Hillel has much obscure and dispersed talk 
about the fragments of the tribes which he 
found in the same quarter. But the follow- 
ing statement by Major Rawlinson will give 
greater satisfaction to the reader : — 

" If the Samaritan captives can be sup- 
posed to have retained to the present day 
any distinct individuality of character, per- 
haps the Kalhurs, who are believed to have 
inhabited from the remotest antiquity those 
regions around Mount Zagros, preserve in 
their name the title of Calah [Halah]. 
They state themselves to be descended from 
Roham, or Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of 
the Jews, — perhaps an obscure tradition of 
their real origin. They have many Jewish 
names among them, and, above all, their 
general physiognomy is strongly indicative 
of an Israelitish descent. The Iliyat of this 
tribe now mostly profess Mohammedanism; 
but a part of them, together with the Gurans, 
who acknowledge themselves to be an offset 
of the Kalhurs, and most of the other tribes 
of the neighbourhood, are still of the 'Ali- 
Ilahi persuasion — a faith which bears evident 
marks of Judaism, singularly amalgamated 
with Sabasan, Christian, and Mohammedan 
legends. The tomb of Baba Yadgar, in the 
pass of Zardah, is regarded as their holy place; 
and this, at the time of the Arab invasion of 
Persia, was regarded as the abode of Elias. 
The 'Ali-Uahis believe in a series of successive 
incarnations of the godhead, amounting to a 
thousand and one, Benjamin, Moses, Elias, 
David, Jesus Christ, Ali, and his tutor Sal- 
man, a joint development, the Imam Husein, 
and the Haf-tan (the seven bodies), are 
considered the chief of these incarnations. 
The Haf-tan were seven Pirs, or spiritual 
guides, who lived in the early ages of Islam, 
and each, worshipped as the Deity, is an ob- 
ject of adoration in some particular part of 
Kurdistan — Baba Yadgar was one of these. 
The whole of the incarnations were thus 
regarded as one and the same person, the 
bodily form of the Divine manifestations 
being alone changed; but the most perfect 
development is supposed to have taken place 
in the persons of Benjamin, David, and Ali." 
Referring to the passage already adduced 



from Rabbi Benjamin, the Major notices 
that he appears to have considered the 
whole of these Ali-IlaMs as Jews, and re- 
marks, " it is possible that in his time their 
religion was less corrupted."* 

Abandoning this subject for the present, 
we may now be allowed to return to the 
historical narrative. 

All obstacles being removed, and every 
facility afforded, Zerubbabel, the grandson 
of king J ehoiachim, and Jeshua, a grandson 
of the high-priest J ozadak, with ten of the 
principal elders, prepared themselves for the 
journey home. The number of the remnant 
who joined these heads of the nation was, in 
round numbers, 50,000, including 7337 male 
and female servants f. This large body was 
composed chiefly, it would seem, of members 
of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, 
although the comparatively high number of 
the re-migrants supports the probability that 
a considerable proportion were of the ten 
tribes. The prophet Daniel, who must at 
this time have been about ninety years old, 
remained at the court of Cyrus, where he 
could probably render much more service to 
his nation than by returning to Palestine. 

Those who were to return assembled from 
all quarters at an appointed place, according 
to the usual method of collecting a caravan, 
furnished with provisions and other things 
necessary for the journey. Their camels, 
horses, and beasts of burden amounted to 
8136. Zerubbabel, on whom devolved the 
serious responsibility of directing this im- 
mense caravan, received from Cyrus the 
sacred vessels of the temple, and was en- 
trusted with the very large contributions 
towards the re-building of the sacred edifice 
made by those of the Hebrew race who chose 
to remain behind. Zerubbabel was not only 
appointed leader or sheikh of the caravan, 
but the office of governor of Judea was en- 
trusted to him. This appointment may pro- 
bably be attributed not more to the cir- 
cumstance which inclined Cyrus to show 
peculiar favour to the nation, than to the 
general policy of the Persian kings in leaving 

* * Geographical Journal,' vol. ix. part 1, p. 36. 
t The number of the congregation was 42,360, which, 
with 7337 servants, makes 49,697. 



394 

the governments of conquered provinces to 
native governors, whenever this could be 
done with safety. Several months were 
consumed in preparations for the journey; 
and encumbered as they were with baggage 
and young children, and therefore obliged 
to travel slowly, the journey itself occupied 
four months. 

The " seventy years " of the captivity were 
completed by the time they arrived; and 
they were now to settle in their own land, 
governed by their own laws, and forming a 
distinct commonwealth. The Persian sove- 
reignty was not a calamity but a benefit, 
from the protection and security which it 
gave to a colony as yet too weak for inde- 
pendence. 

The people dispersed themselves on their 
arrival, in search of their native cities and 
of necessaries for their families. But in the 
following month, being the seventh of the 
Jewish year, they all assembled at J erusalem 
to celebrate the feast of tabernacles. On 
this occasion an altar was reared upon the 
ruins of the temple, and the customary 
sacrifices were offered ; and on this altar the 
daily morning and evening sacrifices were 
afterwards continued. 

In the second month of the second year of 
their return, the people again assembled at 
Jerusalem, to lay the foundation of the 
Temple, the preparations for which, through 
the voluntary contributions of the people 
and the elders, were now completed. This 
was a most joyful occasion to all but the 
old people ; and very loud were the shouts 
of gladness which were raised : but loud as 
were the sounds of rejoicing, they were neu- 
tralised by the wailings of the old people, 
who had seen "the holy and beautiful house" 
in which their fathers praised Jehovah ; and 
who wept bitterly and loudly at the com- 
parison: for they could perceive that the 
edifice would neither be so large, so mag- 
nificent, nor so richly ornamented as the 
temple of Solomon. It is true, as appears 
from the record found at Ecbatana in the 
time of Darius Hystaspes, that Cyrus had 
directed that the temple should be twice as 
large as that of Solomon, and that the 
expense should be defrayed from the royal 



[book f 

treasury. But either the proper officers hi 
neglected to give effect to these orders, c 
the Jews were backward to avail themselvt 
of the full extent of the monarch's bounty 
lest they should awaken the envy of the 
worshippers of Ormuzd, and expose them 
selves to their persecutions. From whateve 
cause, it is certain that they did not builc 
the temple so large as the decree of Cyrus 
allowed*. 

The Persian governors of Syria and Pa- 
lestine offered no opposition to the settle- 
ment of the Jews in their own country, 
or to their proceedings there. No doubt, 
therefore, orders corresponding to the te- 
nour of the decree under which the resto- 
ration took place, had been forwarded to 
them. This, indeed, is stated by J osephus ; 
although such orders, being sent direct to 
the Persian magistrates, are not noticed by 
Ezra. But opposition, persevering and veno- 
mous, came from another and p-obably un- 
expected quarter. This was from the 
colonists whom the Assyrian kings had 
planted in the land of Israel, and who had 
intermarried with the remaining Israelites, 
and now formed one people with them under 
the name of Samaritans. It does not appear 
that the Samaritans were at this time com- 
pletely purged of the idolatries which their 
fathers had brought from foreign lands ; yet 
the measures employed to enlighten them 
with the knowledge of the true God seem 
gradually to have produced a considerable 
effect. The return of the Jews from their 
seventy years' captivity so clearly evinced 
the over-ruling Providence of Jehovah, that 
the Samaritans were extremely desirous to 
join in rebuilding his temple and celebrating 
his worship : " They came to Zerubbabel, and 
to the chief of the fathers, and said unto 
them, ' Let us build with you : for we seek 
your God, as ye do; and we have done 
sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar- 
haddon, king of Assur, which brought us up 
hither.' " This proposal was steadily rejected 
by the Jews: and, whatever their motives 
may have been, it is easy to discern im- 
portant reasons in consequence of which this 

* Ezra vi. 1—5. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



395 



rejection appears to have been subservient 
to the purposes of the Divine economy*. 

Finding they could not prevail, the Sa- 
maritans used every means in their power to 
thwart the enterprise. Their influence at 
the Persian court appears to have been con- 
siderable, owing, perhaps, as Josephus sug- 
gests, to their claiming to be of Median and 
Persian origin. Through this influence they 
managed, during the latter days of Cyrus, 
who was either absent in foreign wars or 
not at leisure to attend to such provin- 
cial matters, to oppose such obstacles to the 
progress of the work that the people got 
disheartened, and discontinued the building. 
This discouragement continued during the 
succeeding reigns of Cambyses and of Smer- 
dis the Magian ; nor was the work resumed 
until the second year of Darius Hystaspes. 

The proceedings of the Samaritans in this 
matter naturally excited the enmity of the 
Jews ; and thus was laid the foundation of 
the hatred between the two nations, which 
new provocations continually increased, until, 
at last, all friendly intercourse between them 
was entirely discontinued. 

Cyrus died seven years after the restoration 
of the Jews. The reigns of Cambyses his 
son, and of the usurping magian Smerdis 
(seven months) occupied together eight 
years. Darius Hystaspes, one of the seven 
nobles who slew the intrusive magian, was 
elected king, 521 B.C. 

At Jerusalem, the people had by this time 
lost their zeal in a work which had been so 
much obstructed, and, counting from the 
destruction of the former temple instead of 

* " The intermixture of the Samaritans with the Jews 
might have rendered the accomplishment of the prophecies 
concerning the family and birth of the Messiah less clear 
—might have re-introduced idolatry among the restored 
Jews, now completely abhorrent from it, and in various 
ways defeated the grand objects of Providence in selecting 
and preserving a peculiar people. In consequence of this 
rejection and the alienation it produced, the Jews probably 
became more vigilant in preserving the strictness, and the 
Samaritans more jealous in emulating the purity, of the 
Mosaic ritual. They became hostile, and therefore un- 
suspected, guardians and vouchers of the integrity of the 
sacred. text, particularly of the Pentateuch. And while 
the Jews in general, blinded by their national prejudices, 
could see in the promised Messiah only a national and 
temporal deliverer, the Samaritans appear to have judged 
of his pretensions with more justice and success." — Dean 
Graves's • Lectures on the Pentateuch,' p. 347. Fifth 
Edition, 1839. 



from the commencement of the Captivity, 
they argued that the time for the rebuilding 
of the sacred edifice had not yet arrived. 
But while they erected fine buildings for 
their own use, and bestowed much expense 
and labour on the mere ornamental parts of 
their own dwellings, this was obviously a 
mere pretence, and provoked the severe 
reproaches of the prophet Haggai, who at- 
tributed to this neglect the drought, and 
consequent failure of crops, which had then 
occurred ; and was authorised to promise 
the blessings of plenty from the time they 
should recommence the building of the 
temple. And to neutralise the discourage- 
ments arising from the detractive or sorrow- 
ful comparisons of the old men who had seen 
the temple of Solomon, he was commissioned 
to deliver the celebrated prophecy : — 

" Thus saith the Lord of hosts : — 
Yet once more, and in a little while, 
And I will shake the heavens and the earth, 
And the sea and the dry land ; 
And I will shake all the nations, 
And the desire oe all natioxs shall come, 
And I will fill this house with glory, saith the 

Lord of hosts. 
The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith 

the Lord of hosts. 
The glory of this latter house shall be greater 

than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts. 
And in this place will I give peace, saith the 

Lord of hosts."— Hag. ii. 6—9. 

The prophecies of Zechariah tended to the 
same objects as those of Haggai; and, in con- 
sequence of their forcible representations, the 
building of the temple was resumed with re- 
kindled zeal. To this resumption of the work, 
after so long a suspension, the Samaritans 
succeeded in drawing the attention of Tatnai, 
the Persian general governor of Syria, who, 
being a man of impartial justice, determined 
to go himself to Jerusalem to investigate the 
matter. He there demanded the authority 
of the Jewish chiefs for their operations, and 
was referred by them to the edict of Cyrus. 
Tatnai sent a clear and rigidly-unbiassed 
report of the matter to the king, and did 
not deem it necessary to direct the present 
suspension of the work. The reference to 
the Persian court could not have been made 



398 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



under more favourable circumstances ; for 
Darius was of a mild and just character; and, 
still more, was a devoted admirer of Cjrus, 
and disposed to pay the highest respect to 
his acts and intentions *. The king, on 
receiving the report of Tatnai, directed a 
search to be made among the archives of 
the kingdom. It was naturally sought at 
first among the records kept in the treasure 
house at Babylon. It was not found there ; 
but a roll containing the edict was ulti- 
mately discovered in the record chamber 
of the palace at Achmetha (Ecbatana). It 
directed not only that the temple should 
be rebuilt, and of larger dimensions than 
before, but that the expenses should be de- 
frayed out of the royal treasury. The king 
directed a copy of this edict to be forwarded 
to Tatnai, together with a letter, in which 
he was enjoined not to obstruct the building, 
but zealously to forward it, to defray the ex- 
penses out of the royal revenues accruing 
within his government, and also to furnish 
the priests with such animals as were ne- 
cessary for the sacrifices, with wheat, salt, 
wine, and oil, from day to day, for the divine 
service.— " That they may offer sacrifices of 
sweet savours unto The God of Heaven, 
and pray for the life of the king and of his 
sons." The letter concluded with an order 
(apparently levelled at the Samaritans), that 
whosoever obstructed the execution of the 
decree should be hanged, and their houses 
demolished: and an imprecation was added 
on all kings and people who should attempt 
to destroy the house of God. 

This transaction gives a very favourable 
idea of the good order and efficient admini- 
stration of the Persian government; while 
the concluding direction affords another and 
very important illustration of the honour 
which Jehovah had obtained for his name 
among the heathen through the eastward 
dispersion of the Hebrews. Indeed, the 

* Hystaspes, the father of Darius, was high in the con- 
fidence and favour of Cyrus, and he (and very probably 
his son) could not but have known so eminent a person as 
Daniel when at the court of Susa. Indeed the wisdom of 
Daniel appears to have been a proverb (Ezek. xxviii. 3). 
It is remarkable that Hystaspes ultimately succeeded 
(under his son) to the very office of archimagus, or master 
of the Magians, which Daniel had formerly occupied. | 



edict of Cyrus, which was on this occasion 
brought to light, contained such a declara- 
tion of reverence for, and dependence on, 
Jehovah, as alone could not but have had 
great weight upon the mind of Darius. It 
may be remarked, indeed, that Darius him- 
self was a disciple and supporter of Zoroaster, 
the reformer of the Magian religion, who is 
supposed to have profited largely by his 
intercourse with the Hebrew captives and 
prophets in Babylon. 

Under these favouring auspices, the work 
proceeded with renewed spirit; and four 
years after, being the sixth of Darius (516 
b.c) the temple was completed. It was 
dedicated with great solemnity, of which 
there has ever since been an annual comme- 
moration in " The Feast of Dedication." In 
the following month the Passover was cele- 
brated in a regular and solemn manner, for 
the first time since the restoration. The 
temple service was then re-established as 
before the Captivity; Jeshua, the high- 
priest, encouraging the other priests and the 
Levites by his example to attend to then- 
peculiar duties. 

The J ews appear to have been undisturbed 
during the remainder of the thirty-six years 
in which Darius reigned. It is possible, 
indeed, that some difficulty arose in the 
latter years of that reign from their relation 
to the Persian empire. Darius, whose whole 
reign was occupied in foreign and generally 
successful war, had then extended his opera- 
tions westward. After the Persians had lost 
the battle of Marathon in 490 b.c, Darius 
made immense preparations for renewing 
the war, which kept all Asia in a ferment 
for three years : in the fourth Egypt revolted, 
which occasioned the division of the army 
into two, one to act against Greece and the 
other against Egypt. But just as all pre- 
parations were completed, Darius died, b.c 
485. Now, as the rendezvous of the army 
in this expedition against Egypt was in the 
neighbourhood of the Hebrew territory, it is 
in every way likely that the Jews were 
obliged to participate in its operations ; or it 
is possible that they obtained an exemption 
from personal service on condition of supply- 
ing the army with provisions. 



CHAP. II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



Xerxes completed tlie intentions of his 
father as to Egypt, which he succeeded in 
again bringing under the Persian yoke. His 
subsequent gigantic plans and operations 
against Greece, however important, claim no 
notice in this place. As the resources of the 
empire were on this occasion taxed to the 
uttermost, there is no reason to suppose that 
the Jews were able to avoid contributing 
towards this vast undertaking, either by 
their property or personal service, or by 
both. At the commencement of his reign 
the Samaritans made some attempt to preju- 
dice him against the inhabitants of Judah 
and Jerusalem. But the king confirmed in 
every particular the grants made by his 
father. Xerxes is the Ahasuerus of Ezra 
iv. 6*. 

He was succeeded in 464 B.C. by his son 
Artaxerxes Longimanus, whose protracted 
reign was replete with incidents most im- 
portant and interesting to the Jews. At the 
beginning of it they began regularly to 
rebuild Jerusalem, and to surround it by a 
wall. But they were stopped in their work 
by an order from the king, in consequence 
of a letter of complaint from the principal 
Samaritan officers, who described Jerusalem, 
truly enough, as " a rebellious and bad 
city ; " and warned him that if the city were 
rebuilt and fortified, the inhabitants were 
sure to prove seditious as in former times, 
and would be likely to raise up troubles, and 
endanger the Persian dominion in that 
quarter. They appealed to the archives of 
the empire to prove that the town had been 
demolished and dismantled on account of its 
rebellion and seditions. The records were 
accordingly consulted, and the fact being 
found as thus stated, the king delayed not 
to send a letter authorising the Samaritan 
chiefs to stop the work until further orders. 
This they forthwith did, and with no gentle 
handf. This opposition of the Samaritans 
was remarkably well-timed, and hence, in 
all probability, its success. Immediately on 

* See also Joseph. * Antiq.,' xi. 4. 8; xi. 5. 1. 

t Ezra iv. 6—23. The whole passage i3 referred to this 
reign in the text (after Howe and Hales), under the im- 
pression that where it stands in the original narrative, it is 
an historical anticipation, and not in its proper chrono- 
logical place. 



the death of Xerxes, Egypt had again revolted 
from the Persian yoke J; the Samaritans 
therefore could not have chosen a fitter 
opportunity to carry their point, or a stronger 
argument to work upon the king's fears, 
than the danger that might result from 
allowing the Jews to fortify their city : for, 
strengthened and increased as they were in 
the seventy-two years since their return, it 
might be apprehended that, as in former 
times, they would not only themselves follow 
the example of Egypt by refusing to pay 
tribute, but that they might offer serious 
obstruction to the Persian army to be em- 
ployed in the reduction of Egypt, in going 
or returning through Palestine. 

After he had subdued all his domestic 
foes and competitors for the crown, Arta- 
xerxes, in the third year of his reign, cele- 
brated at Susa the general and protracted 
rejoicing which usually attended the settle- 
ment of a new king on the throne. At a 
public banquet, the king, in his cups pro- 
bably, had the folly to send for the queen, 
Vashti, that the banqueters might be wit- 
nesses of her extreme beauty. An order so 
repugnant to the customs of women, the 
queen was under the necessity of disobeying, 
and disobedience, whatever were the cause, 
could not be allowed to pass unpunished. 
All the sages of Persia held that, to prevent 
the evil effects of this example, it was neces- 
sary that the queen should be deposed, and 
that the act of deposition should be accom- 
panied by a decree that every man should bear 
ride in his own house! So Vashti was de- 
posed; and, ultimately, a beautiful Jewish 
damsel, named Esther, was promoted to her 
place, in the fourth year of Artaxerxes. 

The king had now leisure to turn his 
attention to Egypt, and in the course of the 
expedition to bring that country back to its 
subjection, which was happily concluded in 
the sixth year of his reign, he had probably 
sufficient opportunity to become acquainted 
with the present character and position of 
the J ews, and with the claims to his favour 
which they derived from the edicts of Cyrus 
and Darius. At all events, in the seventh 
year of his reign, he indicated his knowledge 

X Diod. lib. Hi. 



398 



of those edicts and his willingness to enforce 
them, by authorising "Ezra the priest, a 
scribe of the Law of the God of Heaven" to 
proceed to Jerusalem " to beautify the house 
of Jehovah," and to establish the ecclesias- 
tical and civil institutions with greater firm- 
ness and order than they had yet acquired. 
His powers were very large. He was com- 
missioned to appoint judges, superior and 
inferior, to rectify abuses, to enforce the 
observance of the law, to punish the refrac- 
tory with fines, imprisonment, banishment, 
or even with death, according to the degree 
of their offences. He was also permitted to 
make a collection for the service of the 
temple among those Hebrews who chose to 
remain in the land of their exile ; and the 
king and his council not only largely con- 
tributed towards the same object, but the 
ministers of the royal revenues west of the 
Euphrates were charged to furnish Ezra 
with whatever (within certain limits) of 
silver, corn, wine, oil, and salt (without 
limit) which he might require for the service 
of the temple. Such persons of the Hebrew 
race as thought proper to return with Ezra 
to their own land, were permitted and 
invited to do so. From the whole tenour of 
this commission it is evident that the God of 
the Hebrews was still held in high respect 
at the Persian court ; and, by a new conces- 
sion, all His ministers, even to the lowest 
nethinim, were exempted from tribute, and 
thus put on an equality with the Persians 
and the Medes. For these favours some 
writers would assign "the solicitations of 
Esther" as the motive. But it is not clear 
that the king knew she was a Jewess. It 
was certainly perfectly competent for Esther 
to make the king better acquainted with the 
claims of the God she served and of the 
people to whom she belonged; nor should 
she be blamed for employing, or the king 
for receiving, such influence. But there 
were other and adequate means through 
which " the great king" might acquire this 
knowledge, at which he certainly arrived. 
To the series of splendid acknowledgments 
extracted from these illustrious monarchs 
through the captivity and vassalage of the 
Jews, let us add that of Artaxerxes, whose 



[book v. I 

commission to Ezra orders :— " Whatsoever 
is commanded by the God of Heaven, let it 
be diligently done for the house of the God 
of Heaven ; for why should there he wrath 
[from Him] against the realm of the king 
and his sons." 

It is worthy of remark, however, that the 
decree of Artaxerxes was limited to the 
same object— the temple— as the edicts of 
former kings ; and that no mention is made 
of tlie walls, from which it appears that the 
king was not yet prepared to concede that 
Jerusalem should be fortified. 

The rendezvous of the party gathering for 
this second caravan was by the river Ahava, 
where the number assembled was found to 
consist of sixty "houses," containing one 
thousand seven hundred and fifty-four 
[adult?] males, so that, with women and 
children, there were probably not less than 
six thousand persons. When Ezra surveyed 
this party it was with much chagrin that he 
found not one of the tribe of Levi among 
them, notwithstanding the exemption from 
tribute; and it was not without difficulty 
that two families of priests were induced to 
join the emigrants. 

Considering the treasure with which they 
were charged, and the number of helpless 
women and children of the party, there was 
much ground to apprehend danger from the 
Arabs infesting the desert over which the 
caravan must pass, and who then, as now, 
were wont to assault, or at least to levy large 
contributions on caravans too weak or too 
timid to resist them. Ezra therefore appointed 
a special season for fasting and prayer be- 
side the river, that they might, as it were, 
throw themselves upon the special protection 
and guidance of J ehovah ; for, as Ezra inge- 
nuously confesses, "I was ashamed to require 
of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen 
to help us against the enemy in the way ; 
because we had spoken unto the king, say- 
ing, < The hand of our God is upon all 
them for good that seek Him, but his power 
and his wrath is against all them that for- 
sake him.' " 

Their confidence was not in vain, for they 
all arrived safely at Jerusalem after a jour- 
ney of four months. They set out on the 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



ciiAr. n.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



399 



first month of the seventh year of the king's 
reign, and reached their destination on the 
' first day of the fifth month, 457 B.C. 

Of all the improvements and regulations 
which Ezra introduced into Judea, the book 
which bears his name only records his exer- 
tions in removing the heathen women with 
whom matrimonial connections had very 
generally been formed by the Jews, — to such 
an extent indeed that even the sons of the 
high-priest Jeshua, and many of the other 
priests, had fallen into this grievous error. 
To annul these marriages, was a measure, 
however harsh to the natural affections, in- 
dispensably necessary as a security against 
a relapse into idolatry. 

While Ezra was thus, and by other means, 
labouring to raise the character and improve 
the condition of the Hebrews in Judea, all 
the Jews in the Persian dominions were 
suddenly threatened with entire extermina- 
tion. Haman, an Amalekite, and as such an 
inveterate foe of the Hebrew nation, occu- 
pied the chief place in the confidence and 
service of the Persian king. His paltry 
pride being irritated by the apparent dis- 
respect of a J ewish officer named Mordecai 
(the uncle of queen Esther, but not known 
as such), he laid a plot for the massacre of 
the whole nation and the spoliation of their 
goods. The book of Esther, to which we 
must refer the reader, relates at large the 
particulars of the plot, and shows how the 
machinations of the Amalekite were defeated 
by the address and piety of queen Esther, 
and turned upon the unprincipled contriver 
himself, who was destroyed with all his 
family, and Mordecai (by virtue of an old 
and neglected service) promoted to his place. 

In the narrative of this transaction the 
attention is arrested by the further illustra- 
tion, offered in the case of Haman and after- 
wards of Mordecai, of the distinction and 
wealth which foreigners and captives — or, at 
least, persons of foreign and captive origin 
—were enabled to attain. The rank is 
obvious; and as to the wealth they were 
allowed to acquire, no more striking illustra- 
tion can be afforded than by the fact that 
Haman, to gratify his barbarous whim, was 
in a condition to offer the king a gratuity of 



ten thousand talents of silver, to defray the 
probable deficiency of the royal revenue by 
the proscription of the Jews throughout the 
empire. This the king declined accepting. 
The amount, computed by the Babylonish 
talent, would be upwards of two millions 
sterling ; and this, it appears, was consider- 
ably short of the full amount of the Jewish 
tribute. 

On this occasion we also have another 
example of the mischievous consequences 
which might result from the king being 
unmindful of the heavy responsibility of 
caution, which was designed to be imposed 
by the well-meant law which precluded his 
decrees from being changed or repealed. 
For when Artaxerxes became convinced of j 
the grievous wrong into which he had been 
led in decreeing the massacre of the Jews, it 
was beyond his power to recall the order he 
had issued. All he could do was to dispatch 
swift couriers with a counter decree, em- 
powering the Jews to stand upon their 
defence when assaulted, with the aid of 
whatever moral advantage they might derive 
from this indication of the present intentions 
of the king. On the appointed day, which 
had been destined to sweep the race of Israel 
from the face of the earth, the Jews were 
by no means wanting to themselves. They 
repelled their assailants by force of arms, 
and that with such effect, that in Susa itself 
eight hundred men fell by their hands, and 
in the different provinces seventy-five thou- 
sand. The slaughter among the Jews 
themselves is not stated, but must have been 
considerable. 

This great deliverance has ever since been 
commemorated by the annual Feast of 
Purim, or of Lots, — so called from the lots 
which were superstitiously cast by Haman 
to find a propitious day for the massacre. 

It was not until the twentieth year of his 
reign that Artaxerxes granted the long- 
delayed permission to build the walls of 
Jerusalem. It was then obtained at the 
instance of a Jew named Nehemiah, who 
held at the Persian court the high and con- 
fidential office of cup-bearer, or butler. He 
had become acquainted with the mortifica- 
tions and insults to which the inhabitants of 



400 

J erusalem were exposed through the defence- 
less condition of their city; and the depres- 
sion of his spirits, in consequence, was too 
strongly marked on his countenance to pass 
unnoticed by the king, who demanded the 
cause of his sadness. As it was no ordinary 
misdemeanour to exhibit sadness in the 
presence of " the king of kings," ISTehemiah 
was much alarmed, but answered, " Let the 
king live for ever : why should not my 
countenance be sad, when the city, the place 
of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and 
the gates thereof are consumed with fire]" 
The king encouraged him to declare his 
wishes freely, and the result was that Arta- 
xerxes consented to dispense with his services 
at court for a few years, and ^gave him the 
appointment of tirshata, or civil governor, of 
Judea, in succession to Zerubbabel, whose 
death about this time might furnish an 
additional reason for the appointment *. 
This would not interfere with the commission 
of Ezra, which was chiefly of an ecclesiastical 
nature, and who, by the discharge of his 
proper function of teaching the law to the 
people, would give the new governor impor- 
tant co-operation. 

ISTehemiah was commissioned to build 
walls and gates to the town, to erect a palace 
for himself and future governors, and after- 
wards to rebuild the city. All this he 
accomplished with singular zeal, ability, and 
disinterestedness, in the course of his admi- 
nistration of twelve years, to which his leave 
of absence from the Persian court extended. 
He had to encounter much opposition and 
many threats from the chiefs of the sur- 
rounding nations, — Sanballat the Samaritan, 
Tobiah the Ammonite, the Arabians, and the 
remnant of the Philistines. But Nehemiah 
piously encouraged the people to rely on 
Jehovah, and " to fight for their brethren, 
their sons, and their daughters, their wives, 
and their houses." And he divided them 
into two parts, one to fight and the other to 
labour and build ; and even the builder 
with one of his hands wrought in the work, 
and with the other hand held a weapon." 
Thus, by the most noble exertions, the whole 
wall, which was distributed in lots among 
* Neh. xii. 47. 



BOOK V. ! 

: 

the priests and chiefs of the people, was 
finished^ with all the towers and gates, in 
the short space of fifty-two days. 

On the commission of Kehemiah, Hales, 
following the acute observations of Howes t, 
remarks : — ■ 

" This change in the conduct of Artaxerxes, 
respecting the J ews, may be accounted for 
upon sound political principles, and not 
merely from regard to the solicitations of his 
cup-bearer or the influence of his queen. 

" Four years before, in the sixteenth year 
of his reign, Artaxerxes, who, after "the 
reduction of Egypt, had prosecuted the war 
against their auxiliaries the Athenians, suf- 
fered a signal defeat of his forces by sea and 
land, from Cimon, the Athenian general, 
which compelled him to make an inglorious 
peace with them, upon the humiliating con- 
ditions, 1. That the Greek cities throughout 
Asia should be free and enjoy their own 
laws; 2. That no Persian governor should 
come within three days' journey of any part 
of the sea with an army; and 3. That no 
Persian ships of war should sail between the 
northern extremity of Asia Minor and the 
boundary of Palestine, according to Diodorus 
Sicuius (lib. xii). Thus excluded from the 
whole line of sea-coast, and precluded from 
keeping garrisons in any of the maritime 
towns, it became not only a matter of pru- 
dence but of necessity to conciliate the Jews, 
to attach them to the Persian interest, and 
detach them from the Grecians by further 
privileges; that the Persians might have the 
benefit of a friendly fortified town like Jeru- 
salem, within three days' journey of the sea. 
and a most important pass to keep up the 
communication between Persia and Egypt; 
and, to confirm this conjecture, w r e may 
remark that in all the ensuing Egyptian wars, 
the J ews remained faithful to the Persians ; 
and even after the Macedonian invasion: — 
and surely some such powerful motive must 
have been opposed in the king's mind to the 
jealousy and displeasure this measure must 
unavoidably excite in the neighbouring pro- 
vinces hostile to the Jews, whose remon- 
strances had so much weight with him 
formerly. It was necessary, therefore, to . 

f In his ' Critical Observations on Books/ ii. 82. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 




K A STERN MODE OF WORSHIP 



CHAP. II.] 



THE RESTORATION. 



401 



entrust the important mission to an officer 
high in former trust and confidence such as 
Nehemiah, whose services at court Arta- 
xerxes reluctantly dispensed with, as appears 
from his appointing a set time for Nehe- 
miah's return, and afterwards, from his 
, return again to Persia in the thirty-second 
year of his reign." 

"While the city remained unwalled the 
mass of the people had chosen rather to 
dwell in the country than in a place so con- 
spicuous and yet so insecure. The walls 
were built on the old foundations; and 
Nehemiah found that although as enclosed 
within the walls " the city was large and 
great," yet, " the people were few therein, 
and the houses were not builded." He 
therefore caused the people to be registered, 
and required that one family in ten (to be 
chosen by lot) should come to reside in 
Jerusalem. Those who, without waiting the 
decision of the lot, voluntarily offered them- 
selves to dwell in Jerusalem, were received 
with peculiar favour. The city was thus 
replenished with inhabitants, and the walls 
with defenders. The walls were dedicated 
with great solemnity and joy. And while 
the governor was thus heedful of the stone- 
and-mortar framework of the social system 
which he desired to establish, he was by no 
means negligent of the inhabiting and ani- 
mating spirit. He applied himself diligently 
(assisted by Ezra) to the organization of the 
temple- service, and of the civil government ; 
while various abuses, which the unsettled 
condition of affairs had engendered, were 
corrected by him with a firm and unsparing 
hand. And to strengthen his authority and 
influence, and that he and his government 
might not be burdensome to the people, this 
fine-spirited man declined to receive the 
usual dues of a governor; but while he 
travelled with a great retinue, maintained a 
large number of servants, and kept open 
table at Jerusalem, the heavy charges were 
entirely borne from his own private fortune, 
which must have been very considerable. 
That he, a foreigner and a captive, was 
enabled to accumulate such a fortune, affords 
another illustration of the liberality of the 
Persian government; which also was, un- 



questionably, as far as the Hebrews at least 
were concerned, the best and most generous 
of the foreign governments to which they 
were at any time subjected. 

It was during the government of Nehemiah 
that Ezra, his ecclesiastical coadjutor, com- 
pleted his collection and revisal of the sacred 
books. Traces of his careful hand may still 
be detected throughout the historical books 
of Scripture ; and the settlement of the Old 
Testament canon in nearly its present shape 
may be ascribed to him. Among his labours 
was the exchange of the old Hebrew character 
of writing — with which the people had now 
become unacquainted — for the more shapely 
and generally known Chaldean character, 
with which alone the people were now fami- 
liar. The difference thus created is not so 
great as that which would take place were 
the Germans to exchange their peculiar (and 
not very elegant) character of print for that 
(the Roman) which prevails among nearly 
all other European nations. The Samaritans 
did not adopt or need this change in their 
copies of the Pentateuch ; they retained 
the original character, which, therefore, 
has since been known as the Samaritan 
character. 

It was not alone the old Hebrew character 
of writing, but the language itself, which 
had become unintelligible to the mass of the 
people, who had been born beyond the 
Euphrates, and had imbibed the East- 
Aramaean or Chaldee dialect as a mother 
tongue. The old Hebrew was still well 
known to, and spoken by, educated persons 
in their intercourse with each other; but 
the Chaldee was used in all the common 
intercourse of life, since that only was 
understood by all. It was not, however, 
until the time of the Maccabees, that the old 
Hebrew was completely displaced by the 
Chaldee. This last language is but a dialect 
of the Hebrew, which fact accounts for the 
ease with which the Jews fell into the use of 
it during the Captivity. It however assigned 
to words essentially the same such additional 
or new meanings, and such differing termina- 
tions and pronunciation, that the old Hebrew 
could be but imperfectly intelligible to those 
who understood only the Chaldee. 



d © 



402 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



Accordingly, when Ezra had finished his 
revision of the sacred books, and the people 
thronged to Jerusalem to hear the authentic 
law from his lips, it was necessary that some 
of the Levites should interpret to the multi- 
tude what this excellent person read in 
Hebrew from the book. This was a very 
solemn and interesting occasion. The people 
assembled in the open street; and Ezra, 
raised above the people on a kind of pulpit 
made for the occasion, read from the book of 
the Law to an immense audience, who listened 
with most wrapt attention to the interpreta- 
tions which the surrounding Levites gave. 
It is manifest that the copies of the Law had 
been scarce, and that it had not been publicly 
read to the people, for it is manifest that 
they heard much on this occasion with 
which they were not previously acquainted ; 
and the consciousness of the extent to which 
the injunctions which they heard had been 
neglected by them, filled them with grief, 
and occasioned much and loud lamentation, 
which the Levites allayed with difficulty. 
Among other things, they heard of the Feast 
of Tabernacles, and found that the time of 
its celebration was close at hand. They 
therefore proceeded forthwith to manifest 
their obedience to this law, and they cele- 
brated the feast in a manner so distinguished 
that nothing like it had been known since 
the time of Joshua. 

Nehemiah and Ezra availed themselves of 
the favourable disposition which at this 
time existed to induce the people to enter 
into one of those solemn covenants which we 
have had frequent occasion to notice in the 
past history. This was, however, more 
specific in its obligations; for the people 
pledged themselves, 1, To walk in God's law 
as given to Moses; 2, Not to intermarry 
with the people of the land ; 3, To observe 
the sabbath-day, and not to buy or to sell 
goods thereon; 4, To keep the sabbatical 
year, and to remit all debts therein ; 5, To 
pay a tax of a third of a shekel yearly for 
the service of the temple; 6, And to render 
their first-fruits and tithes as required by 
the Law. 

At the expiration of his twelfth year of 
office, when his leave of absence expired, | 



Nehemiah returned to resume his station at 
the Persian court. 

When he departed, no person with ade- 
quate authority appears to have been left to 
carry on or complete his measures. His 
salutary regulations, and even the solemn 
covenant into which the people had entered, 
was gradually infringed and violated. The 
general laxity of principle and conduct may 
be estimated from the proceedings of the 
persons who might have been expected to 
offer the brightest examples of knowledge 
and faithfulness. Thus the high-priest him- 
self, Eliashib, gave Tobiah the Ammonite 
(the grand opponent of Nehemiah) for lodg- 
ing, even in the temple itself, a large cham- 
ber, which had been used as a store-room 
for the tithes and offerings. This Tobiah, 
as well as his son Johanan, had married 
Jewish women and become allied to the 
high-priest. One of the grandsons of Elia- 
shib was also son-in-law to Sanballat the 
Horonite, another of Nehemiah's great ad- 
versaries. The temple service was neglected ; 
the tithes, appointed for the support of the 
Levites and the singers, were abstracted by 
the high-priest and his agents, or withheld 
by the people ; the sabbath was profaned in 
every possible way*; and marriages with 
strange women were frequent among the 
people. In accounting for the demoraliza- 
tion of this period, it may not be improper 
to connect it with the frequent march of 
Persian troops through the territory in pass- 
ing to and from Egypt, which was frequently 
in a state of revolt. By this Judea was 
made to share in the evils of war, than 
which nothing is more relaxing of the bonds 
by which the order of civil society is main- 
tained. 

The tidings of this relapse occasioned 
much grief to Nehemiah at the Persian 
court, and he ultimately succeeded in ob- 
taining permission to return to Judea. He 
returned in his former capacity as governor, 
and applied himself most vigorously to the 
correction of the evils which had gained 

* One of the profanations consisted in the practice of 
the Tyrians bringing fish to the city for sale on the sab- 
bath day. A curious fact. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



403 



ground during his absence*. His exertions 
appear to have been continued for four years, 
or until the third year of Darius Nothus, 
whom Kehemiah designates as Darius the 
Persian. The end, therefore, of this eminent 
person's second reform, which may be taken 
as the final act in the restoration and settle- 
ment of the Jews in their own land, may be 
ascribed to the year 420 B.C. With this 
year, therefore, the canon of the Old Testa- 
ment concludes ; for Malachi, the last of the 
prophets, is alleged by tradition, supported 
by every probability of internal evidence, to 
have prophesied during this later admini- 
stration of Nehemiah. Malachi is supposed 
by many to be the same as Ezra. 

One of the measures of Nehemiah was to 
expel the grandson of the high-priest, who 
had wedded the daughter of Sanballat, from 
whom he declined to separate. This act was 
attended with important consequences. Jo- 
sephus informs us that this person's name 
was Manasseh ; and that, on being expelled 
from Jerusalem, he went to his father-in-law 
Sanballat, who, by his interest with the 
Persian king, obtained permission to build 
a temple upon Mount Gerizim like that at 
J erusalem, and in which Jehovah was to be 
worshipped with similar services. Of this 
establishment he made Manasseh the high- 

* The time is uncertain and conjectures vary. Hales 
makes it 424 b.c, six years after his return to Persia. 



priest. This, in future, attracted numbers 
of J ews who had married strange wives from 
whom they could not bring themselves to 
part, or who had rendered themselves amena- 
ble to punishment by other transgressions of 
the Law. And this, while it tended in a 
very serious degree to aggravate the enmity 
between the two nations, served ere long to 
correct the remaining idolatrous practices, 
and tendencies to idolatry among the Sama- 
ritans. Receiving the account of these 
matters through Josephus, and other preju- 
diced writers, it behoves us to be cautious of 
receiving all the impressions they intend to 
convey. The temple of Gerizim was un- 
doubtedly a schismatical establishment. But 
seeing that, on the one hand, the Samaritans 
were anxious to worship Jehovah according 
to the regulations of Moses, while, on the 
other, the Jews, whether right or wrong, 
pertinaciously refused to receive their adhe- 
sion to the temple of Jerusalem, it is difficult 
to see what other course was left them than 
to build a temple for themselves. Besides, 
the obligation of adhesion to one temple was 
imposed only on the seed of Abraham ; and 
the Law made no provision for the case of a 
people who desired to worship Jehovah, but 
were repelled by the Jews. And this very 
fact may suggest that this repulsion was in • 
itself not legal, whatever good effects may 
ultimately have resulted from it. 



CHAPTER III. 
From 420 b.c. to 163 b.c. 



After Nehemiah, no more separate governors 
of Judea were sent from Persia. The terri- 
tory was annexed to the province of Ccele- 
Syria, and the administration of Jewish 
affairs was left to the high-priests, subject 
to the control of the provincial governors. 
This raised the high-priesthood to a degree 
of temporal dignity and power, which very 
soon made it such an object of worldly 
ambition, as to occasion many violent and 



disgraceful contests among persons who 
had the least possible regard for the religious 
character and obligations of the sacerdotal 
office. 

The history of this period is obscure and 
intricate. Facts are few, and some of those 
which we possess are hard to reconcile. But 
there is enough to acquaint us with the un- 
holy violence and unprincipled conduct of 
the competitors for the priesthood, and the 



1) d 2 



404 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



sufferings arising from thi3, as well as from 
the arbitrary proceedings of those who suc- 
ceeded in obtaining that high office. 

Jeshua, the high-priest who returned with 
Zerubbabel, was succeeded by his son J oachim, 
and he by his son Eliashib, who obtains unfa- 
vourable notice in the hir*">ry of Nehemiah's 
second administration. F was then old, 
and died in 413 b.c. He was ucoeeded by 
his son Joiada, or Judas, who held the office 
for forty years, 413 — 373 b.c. 

Artaxerxes, who died in 423 B.C., left one 
son by his queen, and seventeen sons by his 
concubines. The first was named Xerxes, 
and, among the latter, history only knows 
Sogdianus, Ochus, and Arsites. Xerxes, the 
only legitimate son, succeeded ; but, after 
forty-five days, he was slain by Sogdianus, 
who mounted the throne. On this, Ochus, 
who was governor of Hyrcania, marched 
thence with a powerful army to avenge the 
deed. Sogdianus submitted, and was put 
to death*. Ochus, in ascending the vacant 
throne, took the name of Darius, and was sur- 
named Nothus, or "bastard," to distinguish 
him from others of the name. 

Of the events of this troubled reign, it 
is perhaps only necessary to notice that the 
Egyptians again shook off the Persian yoke, 
and made Amyrtseus of Sais their king, 
413 b.c. With the aid of the Arabians, they 
drove the Persians out of Egypt, pursued 
them as far as Phoenicia, and maintained 
their independence sixty-four years. Ochus 
sent an army against them without success. 
The Persian forces marched to Egypt along 
the coast, through Judea. This event could 
not fail to act to the serious detriment and 
disquiet of the Jews ; but we possess no pre- 
cise information on the subject. The Persian 
army while on its march might have laid 
waste Idumea, because the Idumeans had 
perhaps taken part with those Arabs, who, 
in conjunction with the Egyptians, had pur- 
sued the Persians into Phoenicia, while the 
Jews continued faithful to the Persian go- 
vernment, with which they certainly had 

* He was smothered in ashes. Ochus had sworn not to 
kill him by sword, poison, or hunger; and therefore in- 
vented this novel kind of death to observe the letter while 
he infringed the spirit of his oath. 



no reason to be dissatisfied. The prophet 
Malachi appears to allude to these circum- 
stancesf. 

Darius Nothus died in 404 b.c, and was 
succeeded by his eldest son Arsaces, who, on 
his accession, took the name of Artaxerxes, 
and was surnamed Memnon, on account of 
his astonishing "memory." The long reign 
of this monarch was full of striking and im- 
portant events ; but our notice must be con- 
fined to the circumstances connected with 
Egypt and Phoenicia, with which the Jews 
could not but be in some way involved. 

Artaxerxes determined to make a vigorous 
effort to restore the Persian power in Egypt ; 
and to this end made most extensive prepara- 
tion, continued for three years. At last, in 
473 b.c, he had equipped a most formidable 
expedition by land and sea, which, he con- 
fidently expected, would speedily reduce the 
strongholds, and firmly establish his authority 
throughout the country. But the jealousy 
between the commanders of the land and 
sea-forces, prevented that union of purpose 
and action which was essential to success. 
Pelusium was found to be impregnable, and 
all the fortified towns were placed in a state of 
defence. The Persian general, Pharnabazus, 
therefore, despaired of making any impression 
upon them, and advanced into the interior ; 
but being opposed by the Egyptian king 
(Nectanebo) with a considerable force, and, 
in consequence of the want of boats, being 
constantly impeded in his movements by the 
various channels of the rising Nile, he was 
obliged to retreat and relinquish the hope of 
subjecting Egypt to the Persian yoke. 

The Egyptian king, by whom the Persians 
were thus repelled, was succeeded in 369 b.c. 
by Teos or Tachos, who formed large designs, 
and made extensive preparations for acting 
offensively against the Persian power. He 
made an alliance with the Lacedaemonians, 
and received from them 10,000 auxiliaries 
under the command of Agesilaus their king. 
Both the person and counsels of this consum- 
mate general were treated with considerable 
disrespect ; and the king persisted in leading 
his army in person into Phoenicia against the 
Persians. But his absence was immediately 

+ Mai. i. 2—5. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



405 



followed by a powerful conspiracy in favour 
of his relative Nectanebo, for whom the army 
also declared, so that the infatuated Tacho 
had no resource but to flee from his own 
people and throw himself under the protec- 
tion of the great and generous king of Persia, 
whose dominions he had invaded. 

The Idumeans again suffered much from 
being mixed up in the contest between the 
Persians and Egyptians. Nor can it be sup- 
posed that the Jews escaped without much 
moral, if not physical, injury. It will be 
considered that they were exposed to the 
burdens of a military rendezvous from 377 
to 374 B.C. ; for at that time there were as- 
sembled in their vicinity 200,000 barbarian 
soldiers, besides 20,000 Greeks; and 300 ships 
of war, 200 galleys of thirty rowers, and a 
great number of store ships were collected at 
Acco (Acre). The invading army of Persia, 
both in going and returning, took its route 
along their coasts, as did afterwards the 
Egyptian army in its invasion of Phoenicia. 
These circumstances could not but be at- 
tended with very injurious effects ; but upon 
the whole the Jews may be considered to 
have enjoyed peace and comfort during most 
of the reign of Artaxerxes Memnon, who 
was a prince of mild and humane character, 
and governed with much moderation and 
prudence, and with considerable political 
wisdom. However, in all the provinces, 
much depended on the character of the 
governor or satrap, whose powers, within 
his province, were almost regal. Artaxerxes 
died in 358 B.C., after a long reign of forty- 
six years. The pen of Xenophon has im- 
mortalized the revolt of his younger brother, 
Cyrus, by which the early part of his reign 
was much troubled. The retreat of the 
10,000 Greeks — who had fought for Cyrus 
and survived his overthrow and death — 
under the conduct of the historian himself, 
has been more admired and celebrated than 
most ancient or modem victories. 

It was between the periods of disturbance 
which have been indicated, namely, in 373 
B.C., that the high-priest Joiada died, and 
was succeeded by his son Jonathan, or 
Jochanan (John). About the time of the 
Egyptian invasion, this person occasioned 



much trouble to his nation. His brother 
Jesus had become so great a favourite with 
the Persian governor Bagoses, that he no- 
minated hi m to the priesthood. When Jesus 
came to Jerusalem in that capacity, he 
was slain by Jonathan in the very temple. 
Bagoses no sooner heard of this outrage 
than he haste- d to Jerusalem ; and when 
an attempt ^rag made to exclude him from 
the temple as a Gentile, and consequently 
unclean, he replied with vehemence, "What! 
am not I as clean as the dead carcase 
that lies in your temple 1 " The punishment 
which Bagoses imposed for the murder of 
Jesus was a heavy tax upon the lambs of- 
fered in sacrifice. This onerous impost was 
not remitted until the succeeding reign ; 
and it must have been the more sensibly 
felt, as the priests had for many years been 
accustomed to receive large contributions 
from the Persian kings towards defraying 
the expense of the sacrifices. 

Artaxerxes Memnon was succeeded in the 
throne of Persia by his son Ochus. In 
his reign, among many other disturbances 
which we need not mention, the Sidonians, 
Phoenicians, and Cyprians revolted, and 
made common cause with the Egyptians, 
who still maintained their independence. 
After repeated failures of his generals to 
reduce them, Ochus himself took the com- 
mand of the expedition against them. He 
besieged Sidon, which was betrayed to him 
by the king Tennes ; on which the Sidonians 
in despair set fire to the city, and burned 
themselves with all their treasures. Terri- 
fied by this catastrophe of Sidon, the other 
Phoenicians submitted on the best terms 
they could obtain ; and among them we may 
include the Jews, who seem to have joined 
the common cause. Being anxious to invade 
Egypt, Ochus was not unreasonable in his 
demands. After having also received the 
submission of Cyprus, the king marched 
into Egypt 350 B.C., and completely re- 
duced it, chiefly by the assistance of Mentor, 
the Rhodian, and 10,000 mercenary Greeks 
whom he had drawn into his service. The 
Egyptians were treated with a severity 
more congenial to the savage disposition 
of Ochus than was the moderation to which 



406 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



policy had constrained him in Phoenicia: — 
he dismantled the towns; he plundered the 
temples of their treasures and public re- 
cords ; and the ox-god Apis he sacrificed to 
an ass — a severe practical satire upon the 
animal worship of Egypt, and not less signifi- 
cant as an act of revenge upon the Egyptians 
for their having nicknamed himself The Ass, 
on account of his apparent inactivity and 
sluggishness. Ochus returned in triumph to 
Babylon, laden with spoil of gold and silvei-, 
and other precious things from the kingdoms 
and provinces he had conquered. From this 
decisive war the humiliation of Egypt may 
be dated. Nectanebo II., the last of her native 
kings, now fled with all the treasures he could 
collect into Ethiopia. Thenceforth, even to 
this day, it has been the destiny of Egypt 
only to change masters, as Ezekiel the prophet 
had foretold*. 

That the Jews were involved in the revolt 
of the Phoenicians has been already intimated. 
This appears from the fact that Ochus went 
from Phoenicia to Jericho, subdued that city, 
took some of the inhabitants with him into 
Egypt, and sent others into Hyrcania to 
people that province. But that the disaffec- 
tion of the Jews was not general, or that, at 
least, it was not shared by the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem, may be inferred from the fact 
that this city was not disturbed. Indeed 
the Jews owed some gratitude to Ochus for 
remitting at his accession the heavy tax + 
which Bagoses had in the preceding reign 
imposed. 

It was in the eighteenth year of Ochus 
(341 B.C.) that the high-priest Jonathan, 
whose murder of his brother Jesus had given 
occasion for the imposition of this tax, died, 
and was succeeded by Jaddua or Jaddus. 

Ochus, after having re-established his 
dominion over all the provinces which 
had newly or in former times revolted, 
abandoned himself to luxurious repose, 
leaving the government in the hands of 
Bagoas, an Egyptian eunuch, and of his 
general Memnon, from both of whom he 
had received important services during the 

* Ezfk. xxix. 13—16. 

j Jahn estimates that it must have produced 50,00(W.> 
perhaps rathers too high an estimate. 



Egyptian war. But Bagoas could not for- 
give the ruin of his country, although that 
had been the basis of his own fortunes. He 
poisoned Ochus and destroyed all his sons, 
except Arses, the youngest. This horrid act 
was followed by his sending back to Egypt 
such of the plundered archives as he could 
collect. Arses, whom he had spared, he 
placed on the throne, expecting to reign in 
his name. But finding that the young king 
contemplated the punishment of the mur- 
derer of his father and his brothers, Bagoas 
anticipated his intention, and in the third 
year of his reign destroyed him and all 
the remaining members of his family. The 
eunuch, whose soul was now hardened to 
iron by the concurrent and repeated action 
of grief and crime, tendered the sceptre to 
Codomanus, the governor of Armenia, a de- 
scendant of Darius Nothus J, and who on his 
accession assumed the name of Darius, and 
is known in history as Darius Codomanus, 
335 B.C. Bagoas soon repented of his choice, 
and plotted the death of this king also ; 
but Darius having discovered his design, re- 
turned to his own lips the poisoned chalice 
which he had prepared for the king. 

Few kings at their accession ever enjoyed 
greater advantages than Darius. He had no 
competitors or opponents ; his treasures, in- 
creased under Ochus by the plunder of many 
lands, seemed exhaustless ; his dominion ap- 
peared well established over all the nations 
which abode from the Indus to the isles of 
Greece, and from the cataracts of the Kile to 
the Caucasian mountains ; and with all this, 
the personal bravery of Darius and his ac- 
knowledged merits made him universally re- 
spected and admired throughout his empi) e. 
But bright as appeared his star, another had 
risen before which his own grew pale and 
became extinct. 

t His grandfather was the brother cf Darius Nothus, 
and his father was the only one of the family who escaped 
the massacre with which Ochus commenced his reign. He 
afterwards married and had a son, who was this Codo- 
manus. The young man lived in obscurity during most of 
the reign of Ochus, supporting himself as an astar.da, or 
courier; by carrying the royal dispatches. He at last had 
an opportunity of distinguishing his valour by slaying a 
Cadusian champion, who, like another Goliath, defied the 
whole Persian army. For this gallant exploit he was re- 
warded by Ochus with the important government of 
Armenia. 



chap, in.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



407 



Alexander, the son of Philip, king of 
Macedon, ascended the throne when he was 
only twenty years of age, in 335 B.C., being 
the very same year that Darius Codomanus 
became king of Persia. It is not necessary 
in a work of this nature to record the exploits 
of this celebrated hero, unless so far as neces- 
sary to carry on the history of Palestine and 
the Jews. 

In the spring of 334 b.c, Alexander arrived 
at Sestos on the Hellespont, at the head of 
little more than 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, 
and had them conveyed to Asia by his fleet of 
160 galleys, besides transports, without any 
opposition from the enemy on their landing. 
He had with him only seventy talents, or 
a month's pay for his army, and before 
he left home he disposed of almost all the 
revenues of the crown among his friends. 
When asked " what he left for himgelf 1 " 
he answered "Hope" Such was the spirit 
with which Alexander invaded Asia. 

On the fifth day after the passage of the 
Hellespont, Alexander met the Persians at 
the river Granicus in the Lesser Phrygia, 
where the governor of the western provinces 
had assembled an army of 100,000 foot and 
20,000 horse to oppose his passage. By de- 
feating this great army Alexander gained 
possession of the Persian treasury at Sardis, 
the capital of the western division of the 
Persian Empire ; several provinces of Asia 
Minor then voluntarily submitted to him, 
and in the course of the summer others were 
subjugated. In the campaign of the fol- 
lowing year (333 B.C.) Alexander subdued 
Phrygia, Paphlagonia, Pisidia, Cappadocia, 
and Cilicia. 

Darius meanwhile was not remiss in mak- 
ing preparations for a vigorous resistance to 
the most formidable enemy the empire had 
ever seen. His admiral, whom he had sent 
with a fleet to make a diversion by a descent 
upon Macedonia, died in the midst of the 
enterprise ; and in an age where so much de- 
pended upon individuals, his death spoiled 
the undertaking. Darius then assembled a 
vast army, which some accounts make 400,000, 
others 600,000 men, in Babylonia, and led 
them in person towards Cilicia to meet Alex- 
ander. That hero, on hearing of this move- 



ment, hastened forward to seize the passes of 
Cilicia. In this he succeeded, and stationed 
himself at Issus, where not more than 30,000 
men could march up to the attack. In this 
position his flanks were protected, and he 
could bring his whole army into action, while 
the Persians could only bring a number of 
men equal to his own into conflict. Darius 
saw too late how much wiser it had been 
for him to await the Greeks in the plains 
of Damascus. He lost the battle. The vast 
number of his soldiers was worse than useless; 
for the retreat was thus so obstructed, that 
more were crushed to death in the eagerness 
of flight than had been slain by the weapons 
of the Greeks. Darius himself escaped with 
difficulty, leaving his whole camp, with his 
own rich baggage, and his mother, wife, and 
sons, in the hands of the victor. These last 
were treated with tenderness and respect by 
the generous conqueror. To him this vic- 
tory opened Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt. 
Immediately after the battle he sent to 
Damascus, and took all the heavy baggage, 
equipage, and treasures of the Persian army, 
with their wives and children, which had 
been left behind in the disastrous expedition 
to the Syrian straits. 

For the present Alexander did not follow 
Darius, who withdrew beyond the Euphrates; 
but according to his original plan of reducing 
first all the maritime provinces of the empire, 
he marched in the spring of 332 b.c. into 
Phoenicia. All the states of that country 
tendered their submission to him, except 
Tyre, which, however, was willing to render 
him barren testimonials of respect, had he 
been content with these. The siege of this 
place was one of the most splendid of Alex- 
ander's operations, and is even at this day 
regarded with admiration by military men. 
Tyre, which since the destruction of the an- 
cient city by Nebuchadnezzar had been re- 
built upon an island about 400 fathoms from 
the shore, relied upon the aid of Carthage 
(which was promised by the Carthaginian 
ambassadors there present in the city) and 
still more upon its situation, Alexander 
being destitute of shipping*, and on its 

* Alexander, after the battle of the Granicus, had dis- 
charged and dismissed his fleet, which was too small to 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V 



walls, which, were high and strong, and 
which were now additionally strengthened. 
The city was plentifully supplied with pro- 
visions, and fresh supplies could be brought 
by sea without any difficulty. But Alex- 
ander, with the rubbish of the ancient city, 
constructed a causeway from the shore to the 
island, and in seven months took the place 
by storm, although the Tyrians defended 
themselves bravely. Many of them fled to 
Carthage by sea, but of those who remained, 
8000 were put to the sword, 30,000 were sold 
into slavery, and 2000 were crucified, while 
the city was plundered and laid in ashes. 
These barbarities were committed under the 
policy of deterring other places from offering 
resistance to the conqueror. Thus the pro- 
phecy of Zechariah respecting new Tyre was 
literally accomplished as the previous pro- 
phecy of Ezekiel against the old city had 
been fulfilled in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. 
Alexander had, however, enlarged views of 
commercial policy, which induced him to re- 
people Tyre from the neighbouring countries; 
and — improved in its harbours and basins by 
the very isthmus which he had made, and by 
which, consolidated by time, the island has 
ever since been connected with the shore — 
this maritime city was not long in recovering 
much of its former greatness. 

There is every reason to conclude that 
Alexander, when he invaded Syria, sum- 
moned all the cities to surrender, to pay to 
him their customary tribute, and to furnish 
his army with provisions. Josephus affirms 
that during the siege of Tyre, a written 
order of this description came to Jerusalem, 
addressed to Jaddua, the high-priest, as the 
chief magistrate of the nation. Jaddua 
replied that he had sworn fealty to Darius, 
and could not violate his oath as long as 
that monarch was living. Alexander, natu- 
rally of a furious and impetuous temper, was 
highly irritated by this reply, and threatened 
that as soon as he had completed the con- 
cope with that of the Persians (collected from Egypt and 
Phoenicia), and yet too large for his slender treasury to 
maintain. He declared that he would render himself 
master of the sea by conquering on land— that is, by 
getting the ports and harbours of the enemy into his pos- 
session. It was in consequence of this large idea that he 
persevered in reducing Phoenicia and Egypt before he ad- 
vanced into the interior. 



quest of Tyre, he would, by the punishment 
of the Jewish high-priest, teach all others to 
whom they were to keep their oaths. 

Accordingly, on his progress to Egypt, 
after the destruction of Tyre (332 b.c.) he 
turned aside from Gaza, which he reduced, 
to chastise Jerusalem. But he was met at 
Sapha — an eminence near Jerusalem, which 
commanded a view of the city and temple — 
by a solemn procession, consisting of the 
high-priest arrayed in his pontifical robes, 
attended by the priests in their proper 
habits, and by a number of the citizens in 
white raiment. This course Jaddua had 
been commanded to take, in a vision, the 
preceding night. When Alexander beheld 
the high-priest, he instantly advanced to 
meet him, adored the sacred Name inscribed 
on his mitre, and saluted him first. This 
singular conduct the hero accounted for by 
observing to those around him, — " I adore 
not the high-priest, but the God with whose 
priesthood he is honoured. When I was at 
Dios in Macedonia, and considering in my- 
self how to subdue Asia, I saw in a dream 
such a person, in his present dress, who 
encouraged me not to delay, but to pass over 
with confidence, for that himself would lead 
my army and give me the Persian Empire. » 
Since therefore I have seen no other person 
in such a dress as I now see, and recollect 
the vision and the exhortation in my dream, 
I think that having undertaken this expedi- 
tion hy a Divine mission, I shall conquer 
Darius, overthrow the Persian Empire, and 
succeed in all my designs." Having thus 
spoken (to Parmenio) he gave his right hand 
to the high-priest, and going into the temple, 
he offered sacrifice according to the high- 
priest's directions, and treated the pontiff 
and the priests with distinguished honours. 
The book of Daniel was then shown to him, 
in which it was foretold that one of the 
Greeks should overthrow the Persian Empire, 
pleased at which, and believing himself to 
be the person intended, he dismissed the 
multitude. The day after, he caused the 
people to be assembled, and desired them to 
ask what favours they desired ; on which, at 
the suggestion of the high-priest, they asked 
and obtained the free enjoyment of their 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



409 



national laws, and an exemption from tribute 
every seventh year. He also, by a bold 
anticipation of his fortunes, promised that 
the Jews in Babylon and Media should enjoy 
their own laws ; and he offered to take with 
him in his expedition any of the people who 
?hose to share his prospects*. 

This story has been much questioned by 
many writers, as they were at perfect liberty 
to do. Nevertheless, as these questioners 
are of the same class as those who doubt on 
the unusual or supernatural details of the 
sacred history itself, it is impossible not to 
see that the animus of objection is essentially 
the same. We are therefore disposed to 
declare our belief in this statement : 1, Be- 
cause Alexander had been a clear and con- 
spicuous object of prophecy ; and that an 
operation upon his mind by dream or vision, 
was as natural and necessary as in the cases 
of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar: 2, Be- 
cause it was as necessary that the God of 
the Hebrews should be made known to him 
as the bestower of empires, as to the other 
great conquerors — all of whom had been 
brought to avow it: 3, Because an operation 
upon the mind of Alexander was a natural 
and necessary sequel to the operations upon 
the minds of those former conquerors: 4, 
Because the impression described as being 
made by this dream upon Alexander, and 
the conduct which resulted from it, is per- 
fectly in unison with his character and 
conduct as described by other historians : 5, 
Because the Jews actually did enjoy the 
privileges which are described as the result 
of this transaction, and which it would not 
otherwise be easy to account for, or to refer 
to any other origin. 

The Samaritans had early submitted to 
Alexander, and sent him auxiliaries at the 
siege of Tyre; and now seeing the favour 
with which the Jews had been treated, they 
were not at all backward to claim the same 
privileges which had been conceded to them; 
for, as Josephus (with some asperity) re- 
marks, the Samaritans were always ready to 
profess themselves to be Jews, when the 
sons of Abraham were in prosperous circum- 
stances and equally ready to disavow the 

* Joseph. « Antiq.,'xi. 8, 4, 5. 



connection when the Jews were in distress 
or difficulty. They also met Alexander in 
solemn procession, and as they were gra- 
ciously received, they also requested exemp- 
tion from tribute on the sabbatical year, 
since they, as well as the Jews, then left 
their lands uncultivated. But as, when 
pressed, they could not give a direct and 
satisfactory answer to the question whether 
they were Jews, Alexander told them he 
would take time to consider the matter, and 
let them know his decision when he returned 
from Egypt. It was not his policy to en- 
courage such applications, as others, under 
the same or other pretences, might make 
similar claims of exemption, to the great 
injury of the public revenues. The eight 
thousand Samaritans who had assisted him 
at the siege of Tyre he took with him to 
Egypt, and assigned them lands in the 
Thebaid. 

When Alexander reached Egypt, he met 
with no opposition. The Persian garrisons 
were too weak to resist him, and the natives 
everywhere hailed him as their deliverer 
from the Persian bondage. In fact the 
Egyptians abhorred the Persians, and liked 
the Greeks as much as any foreigners could 
be liked by them. And the reason is very 
obvious. The Persians hated and despised 
image and animal worship as thoroughly as 
it was possible for the Jews to do, and the 
power of their arms gave them much oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of the iconoclastic 
zeal by which they were actuated. They 
lost no opportunity of throwing contempt 
and ignominy upon the idols and idolaters 
of Egypt. But the pliable Greek regarded 
the same objects with reverence, and had no 
difficulty of so adopting them into his own 
system, or of identifying them with his own 
idols, as such a course enabled him to parti- 
cipate in the worship which the Egyptians 
rendered to them. 

From Egypt Alexander went to visit the 
temple of Ammon, in an oasis of the western 
desert; and at this celebrated temple got 
himself recognised as the son of the god 
(commonly known as Jupiter Ammon) wor- 
shipped there*. It is better (with Plutarch) 

* This god was worshipped under the form of a ram : 



410 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



to attribute this to political motives, than to 
admit that impression of Alexander's under- 
standing which the affair is calculated to 
convey. Alexander had much good sense, 
as yet uncorrupted by the extraordinary 
prosperity which had attended his under- 
takings ; but he knew that there were mil- 
lions in the world who would receive the 
belief of his heavenly origin as a discourage- 
ment to resistance, and as a consolation in 
defeat. 

After his return from Libya, Alexander 
wintered at Memphis, and appointed separate 
and independent governors of the several 
garrisoned towns, in order to prevent the 
mischief so often experienced by the Persians 
in entrusting too much power to a single 
hand. He prudently separated the financial, 
judicial, and military functions, to prevent 
the oppression of the people by their union ; 
and his enlightened and comprehensive 
policy chose the site of a new city, Alexan- 
dria, to be the emporium of commerce for 
the eastern and western worlds by its two 
adjacent seas, the Red Sea and the Mediter- 
ranean. The great prosperity which the 
city ultimately reached, and a considerable 
share of which it has ever since retained, 
affords the best illustration of the large and 
sagacious views with which it was founded. 

Early in the spring of 331 B.C., Alexander 
prepared to seek Darius beyond the Eu- 
phrates. The rendezvous of his army was 
appointed at Tyre; in advancing to which 
Alexander once more passed through Pales- 
tine. During his absence in Egypt, some 
Samaritans (perhaps enraged that they had 
not obtained the same privileges as the 
Jews) set fire to the house of Andromachus, 
whom Alexander had appointed their 
governor, and he perished in the flames. 
The other Samaritans delivered up the 
culprits to Alexander, on his return from 
Egypt; but they could hardly dare at this 
time to remind him of their previous claim 
(respecting the sabbatic year), which he had 
promised to consider, as the conqueror was 
so highly enraged that, not satisfied with 
the punishment of the actual culprits, he 

hence the ram's horns which appear on the head of Alex- 
ander in many figures of him. 



removed the Samaritans from their city, and 
transferred thither a Macedonian colony*. 
The Samaritans, thus excluded from Samaria, 
thenceforth made Shechem their metropolis. 
This, it will be remembered, was at the foot 
of Mount Grerizim, on which the Samaritan 
temple stood. 

The operations and victories of Alexander 
beyond the Euphrates are not so connected 
with the history of Palestine as to require to 
be traced in this work. We therefore abstain 
from particular notice of the battle of Arbela, 
in Assyriaf, which gave Alexander possession 
of the Persian throne ; the flight of Darius 
into Media, with the view of raising new 
levies there ; the prevention of this intention 
by the speedy pursuit of Alexander; the 
further flight of Darius, and his murder by 
the conspirators, into whose hands he had 
fallen, and whom Alexander ultimately 
overtook and punished. As little need our 
attention be detained by his northern and 
Indian expeditions, full as they are of 
interesting circumstances on which it might 
be pleasant to expatiate. 

He returned to Persia in 324 B.C., with a 
character still great, and adequate to great 
occasions ; but, upon the whole, very much 
damaged in its finer traits, by the intoxica- 
tion of mind which, but too naturally, his 
inordinate successes produced. On his return 
he enquired into and punished the mal- 
administrations of his generals and governors 
of provinces, during his long absence east- 
ward. The last year of his life he spent in 
a circuit through the imperial cities of Per- 
sepolis, Susa, Ecbatana, and Babylon, and in 
forming the noblest plans for the consolida- 
tion and improvement of his mighty empire. 
These plans we cannot recapitulate; but 
they are well worth the most attentive study 
of those who would realize a just impression 
respecting one of the most remarkable men 
the world has produced. The grasp of his 
mind was perhaps as large as that of his 
ambition : and while we regard his plans of 
universal conquest, and the sacrifice of 
human life and happiness which his cause- 
less wars involved, with the most intense 

* Curtius, iv. 21. Comp. Ruseb. Chron. 
f Fought Oct. 1, 331 B.C. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



411 



dislike, we have no desire to conceal our 
admiration of the many illustrious qualities 
■which his mind exhibited. 

Alexander arrived at Babylon in 324 B.C., 
intending to make that city his future resi- 
dence, and the capital of his gigantic empire. 
Hence he was full of projects for restoring 
that city to its ancient beauty and magnifi- 
cence. This included the rebuilding of the 
temple of Belus, which the Jewish prophecies 
had devoted to destruction, never to he rebuilt. 
Alexander, nevertheless, actually commenced 
this work. The soldiers were employed in 
turn to remove the rubbish. The Jews alone 
refused to render any assistance, and suffered 
many stripes for their refusal, and paid 
heavy fines, until the king, astonished at 
their firmness, pardoned and excused them. 
" They also," adds their historian, " on their 
return home, pulled down the temples and 
altars which had been erected by the colonists 
in their land, and paid a fine for some to the 
satraps, or governors, and received a pardon 
for others." 

The death of Alexander at Babylon, — in 
the midst of his prosperity, his excesses, his 
large plans, and also during his ominous 
attempt to rebuild the temple of Belus, and 
at the early age of thirty-two years, — was 
calamitous to the Jewish nation. For amidst 
the contests that prevailed among Alexander's 
successors, — each striving for the mastery, 
and celebrating his death, as he himself 
foretold, with funeral games the most bloody, 
— "evils were multiplied in the earth,"* 
and the J ews, from their intermediate situa- 
tion, lying between the two powerful king- 
doms (as they speedily became) of Syria 
northward, and of Egypt southward, were 
alternately harassed by both. According to 
the imagery of Josephus, " They resembled a 
ship tossed by a hurricane, and buffeted on 
both sides by the waves, while they lay in 
the midst of contending seas."f 

Every one is acquainted with the scramble 
for empire which took place among the 
generals and principal officers of Alexander, 
upon his death. It is useless to enter into 

* 1 Mace. i. 1.9. 

\ ' Antiq.' xii. 3, 3. See Hales, ii. 537. 



the details and trace the results of this 
struggle in the present work. It is only 
necessary that we should disentangle from 
the complicated web which history here 
weaves, such threads as may be found useful 
in leading on the history of the Jews and 
Palestine. 

It was determined that Arideeus, an ille- 
gitimate brother of Alexander, a man of no 
capacity, should be made king under the 
name of Philip, and that a posthumous son 
of Alexander's, called Alexander iEgeus, 
should be joined to him, Perdiccas being 
regent and guardian of the two kings, who 
were both incapable of reigning. After 
some deliberation Perdiccas distributed the 
governments among the generals and mini- 
sters. Some who had been appointed by 
Alexander were confirmed in their provinces. 
The rest are named below J. 

It was scarcely possible that the authority 
of two such kings, vested in a regent, should 
hold in check the powerful and ambitious 
governors of the provinces. Indeed the 
latter paid them the least possible regard 
and attention, and immediately after the 
assignment of the provinces, wars broke out 
not only between the governors themselves, 
but between them and the regent. 

Our plan of confining our notices to the 
circumstances which more immediately 
affected Palestine, leads us first to notice 
the combination against the regent Perdiccas, 
which was formed in 322 B.C. by Antigonus, 
Antipater, Leonatus, and Ptolemy, on account 
of the design which Perdiccas betrayed of 
appropriating the crown of Macedonia, of 
which Antigonus was himself desirous. 
Perdiccas, who kept the young kings con- 
stantly with him, was then in Cappadocia. 
The next spring he, accompanied by the two 

t Porus and Taxiles had India ; Sebyrrius, Arachosia 
and Gedrosia ; Tleopolemus, Caramania ; Peucestes, 
Persia ; Python, Media; Phrataphemes, Parthia and 
Hyrcania ; Stanasor, Aria and Drangiana; Philip, Bactria 
and Sogdiana; Arcesilaus, Mesopotamia; Archon, Baby- 
lonia; Ptolemy Lagus, Egypt; Laomedon, Syria and Pales- 
tine; Philotas, Cilicia; Eumenes, Paphlagonia and Cappa- 
docia; Antigonus, Pamphylia, Lycia, and Greater Phrygia; 
Cassander, Caria; Meleager, Lydia; Leonatus, Lesser 
Phrygia, and the country around the Hellespont; Lysi- 
machus, Thrace; Antipater, Macedonia; Seleucus, after- 
wards destined to be the greatest of these names, received 
the important office of commander of the cavalry. 



412 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



kings, marched a large army through Syria 
into Egypt, to subdue Ptolemy in the first 
place, while Eumenes was left in Asia Minor 
to prosecute the war against Antipater and 
his allies. The result of this expedition was, 
that Perdiccas was slain by his own soldiers, 
who went over to Ptolemy, who was a very 
able and popular man, and natural brother 
to Alexander. Eumenes was proclaimed an 
outlaw, and, ultimately, the regency was 
undertaken by Antipater, who made some 
changes in the governments, appointing 
Seleucus governor of Babylonia ; Antigonus 
to be general of Asia, to prosecute the war 
against the outlawed Eumenes; and the 
command of the cavalry he gave to his own 
son Cassander, who was then with Anti- 
gonus. 

The passage of a part of the royal army, 
through Judea, in going to and from Egypt, 
as just related, could not fail to involve the 
Jews in some of the miseries of war. But 
when the same royal army, under Antigonus, 
was otherwise employed against Eumenes, 
Ptolemy, who had become very powerful 
embraced the opportunity to take possession 
of Judea, Samaria, Phoenicia, and Coele- 
Syria, which were all easily subjugated by 




[Ptolemy Lagus, or Soter.] 

Mcanor his general. Laomedon, the governor, 
was taken prisoner, but contrived to make 
his escape. Thus Palestine was partly the 
theatre of this short war ; but as Laomedon 
could make but a faint resistance, little 
injury was probably sustained by the inha- 
bitants; and, since it was their destiny to 
be a subject people, the inhabitants were 
well rewarded for what they then suffered, 
by passing under the dominion of so benevo- 
lent a prince as Ptolemy Lagus. He went 
himself to Jerusalem, as Josephus says, for 
the purpose of sacrifice in the temple after 



the example of Alexander, and on this occa- 
sion declared himself master of the country. 
To secure his dominions he took a number 
of the people with him to Egypt. Among 
these were several of the Samaritans and 
several thousand Jews ; but their condition 
could not be very calamitous, as many of 
their countrymen soon followed them of 
their own accord. 

Ptolemy was soon made acquainted with 
the fidelity with which the Jews had main- 
tained their allegiance to the Persian kings. 
This was a rare quality in those times : and 
wishing to attach such a people to himself, 
he restored the privileges they had enjoyed 
under Alexander; he employed a part of 
them to garrison his fortresses; others he 
sent to Cyrene, that he might have some 
faithful subjects in that newly-acquired 
territory; and many more were assigned a 
residence in Alexandria, with the grant of 
the same privileges as Alexander had be- 
stowed on the Macedonian inhabitants of 
that city. 

In 316 B.C. the puppet-king Aridaeus was pri- 
vately put to death, by Olympias, the mother 
of Alexander the Great, and in the same 
year Alexander iEgeus was imprisoned with 
his mother Roxana, by Cassander, governor 
of Caria; and he also was murdered in 310 
B.C. Even this, however, did not quite put 
an end to the mockery of dependence and 
deference ; for it was not until the death of 
Hercules, the remaining son of Alexander 
the Great, by his wife Barsine, that the 
satraps put on crowns and took the name of 
kings. 

By the year 315 B.C. the turbulent and 
ambitious Antigonus had acquired such 
power as excited the alarm of Seleucus, 
Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander (then 
governor of Macedonia), who entered into 
an alliance against him. Antigonus himself 
was not idle, for the year following he 
wrested from the grasp of Ptolemy, Palestine, 
Phcenicia, and Coele-Syria. In consequence 
of this Palestine and its vicinity became for 
three years the theatre of war between 
Ptolemy and Antigonus, and during that 
time the Jews must have suffered much, as 
their country frequently changed masters. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



413 



1 




[ Anngonus.J 



The consequence was, that many of the 
inhabitants voluntarily withdrew to Egypt, 
where, and particularly at Alexandria, they 
could enjoy freedom and peace under a mild 
government. During these wars Jerusalem 
does not, however, appear to have been 
molested, and was spared when Ptolemy 
gave up Samaria, Acco (Acre), Joppa, and 
Gaza, to pillage. 

It was at the last-mentioned city, Gaza, 
that the great battle was fought between 
Ptolemy and Demetrius (312 B.C.), which, by 
the defeat of the latter, threw the country 
again into the hands of the satrap of Egypt. 
In this battle Demetrius had a large force of 
elephants, mounted by native Indian riders. 
But notwithstanding the alarm which they 
inspired, they contributed to his defeat 
through the confusion they produced, when 
annoyed and harassed by the prudent mea- 
sures which Ptolemy took against them. 
They were all taken, and most of the Indians 
slain. 

Seleucus had a joint command in this 
action. He was soon after furnished by 




[Seleucus Nicator.] 

Ptolemy with an inconsiderable force of two 
hundred horse and eight hundred foot, with 
which he might prosecute his own interests, 
and at the same time annoy Antigonus in 
the East. With this handful of men he 
crossed the desert and the Euphrates, and 



paused at Haran to increase his army in 
Mesopotamia. His entrance into Babylonia 
was like a triumphal procession, for the 
people, mindful of the justice of his previous 
administration, and the great qualities of 
character and conduct which he had dis- 
played, flocked to his standard in crowds, 
and he recovered with the utmost ease not 
only the city and province of Babylon, but 
the whole of Media and Susiana; and he 
was enabled to establish his interest in this 
quarter upon so solid a foundation that it 
could no more be shaken, notwithstanding 
the momentary appearance of success which 
next year attended an attempt made by 
Demetrius to recover Babylon for his father 




[Demetrius Poliorcetes.] 



Antigonus. It is from this recovery of 
Babylon by Demetrius in October 312 B.C., 
twelve years after the death of Alexander, 
that the celebrated " Era of the Seleucidse " 
commences. It is also called the " Greek " 
and the " Alexandrian Era ; " while the 
Jews, because obliged to employ it in all 
their civil contracts, called it the " Era of 
Contracts." Some nations compute from the 
spring of the ensuing year ; but that this, as 
some suppose, arose from the fact that 
Seleucus was not until then fully established 
in the possession of Babylon (after the 
attempt of Demetrius) may very well be 
doubted. It is more natural to resolve the 
difference into an adjustment of the era to 
the different times at which the year was 
commenced by different nations — some at 
the autumnal, and others at the vernal 
equinox*. 

* It may be doubted whether the Era in its origin had 
any real reference to the taking of Babylon, although that 
event happened to occur in the year to which its com- 
mencement is referred. This Era long continued in general 
use in Western Asia. The Arabians, who called it the " Era 



414 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



Meanwhile Demetrius gained an important 
advantage over the general (Cilles) whom 
Ptolemy had despatched to drive him out of 
Upper Syria, where he remained with the 
remnant of his army ; and on this occasion 
the victor, following the example which had 
lately been set by Ptolemy, directed the 
prisoners which were taken to be restored. 
It is interesting to note the introduction of 
such civilized amenities into transactions so 
essentially savage, and so humiliating to the 
just pride of reason, as those which warfare 
involve and produce. When the news of this 
success reached Antigonus (then in Phrygia) 
he hastened to join his son ; and the aspect 
of their joint forces was so formidable, that 
Ptolemy judged it prudent to evacuate his 
recent conquests in Syria. Having therefore 
caused most of the fortifications of the places 
he relinquished to be demolished, he with- 
drew into Egypt, laden with spoil, and at- 
tended by great numbers of Jews, who were 
weary of continuing in what seemed likely to 
become the troubled battle-ground between 
the great ruling powers of Egypt and Syria, 
and chose rather to avail themselves of the 
security and ample privileges by which the 
wise policy of Ptolemy invited them to settle 
in Egypt. 

Elated by his successes, Antigonus con- 
ceived the design of reducing to his yoke 
the Nabathsean Arabs, who at this time 
inhabited the mountains of Seir. Availing 
himself of the absence of the active popu- 
lation of Petra at a great and distant fair 
in the desert, the general Athenseus sacked 
that remarkable metropolis, and departed 
with immense booty. But overcome with 
fatigue, the army halted on the way, and lay 
carelessly at rest, when it was surrounded 
and cut in pieces by the hosts of the re- 
turning Nabathgeans. Sixty only escaped. 

of the two-horned" (Dilkarnaim) , meaning Alexander, 
did not relinquish it till long after the Era of the Hegira 
had been adopted. It is still retained by the Syrian 
Christians under the name of the Era of Alexander. Even 
the Jews, who in the first instance had been obliged to 
adopt it from its general use in civil contracts, employed 
no other epoch until 1040 a.d., when, being expelled from 
Asia by the caliphs, and scattered about in Spain, England, 
Germany, Poland, and other western countries, they began 
to date from the Creation, although still without entirely 
dropping the Era of the Seleueida?. 



Antigonus afterwards sent Demetrius to 
avenge this loss. But he, advancing to 
Petra, and perceiving the hazard and de- 
lay of the enterprise, was glad to compound 
with the people on terms which bore a show 
of honour to his father, without being dis- 
graceful to them. Petra, which was the 
chief scene of these enterprises, was doubt- 
less the city, in a valley of Mount Seir, 
which, after the oblivion of ages, has been 
brought to our knov/ledge and minutelv 
described by Burckhardt, Mangles, Laborde, 
and other travellers. We notice this expe- 
dition chiefly for the sake of recording, that 
Demetrius on his return by way of the Dead 
Sea, took notice of the asphaltos of that lake, 
and gave such an account of it to Antigonus 
as led him to desire to render it a source 
of profit to his treasury. He therefore de- 
spatched the aged historian Hieronymus, 
with men to collect the asphaltos for the be- j 
nefit of the government. The Arabs looked 
on quietly, and offered no interruption until 
a large quantity had been collected and pre- 
parations were made for carrying it away; 
then they came down with six thousand 
men, and surrounding those who were em- 
ployed in this business, cut them in pieces. 
Hieronymus escaped. Thus we perceive that 
the Asphaltic Lake, otherwise useless, had 
become a source of wealth and object of con- 
tention on account of its bitumen. 

We need not enter into the treaties and 
wars between the satraps, during the suc- 
ceeding years. Antigonus remained in pos- 
session of Syria. In 306 B.C. Demetrius, who 
had been highly successful in Greece, in- 
vaded the island of Cyprus, and made the 
conquest of it after repelling Ptolemy, who 
came with a fleet to the assistance of his 
allies. This conquest was so pleasing to 
Antigonus that he thereupon assumed the 
title of king, and had such confidence in 
the duty and affection of his excellent son, 
that he saluted him (by letter) with the 
same title, thus making him the associate of 
his government. When this was heard in 
Egypt, the people, out of their attachment 
to Ptolemy, saluted him also as king, where- 
upon Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus in 
Babylon, and even Cassander in Macedonia, 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



415 



were hailed by the regal title, by the na- 
tions under their rule. This none of them 
strenuously forbade or opposed; and although 
; they did not immediately call themselves 
kings on their coins and in their edicts, they 
■ all did so ere long, with more or less show of 
j decent reluctance and delay. In those times, 
however, the kingly title was very common, 
' and much less of special significance was 
connected with it than it has since acquired. 

Elated by this and his other great suc- 
cesses, Antigonus cast his eyes upon Egypt. 
In 305 B.C. he collected in Syria an army of 
eighty thousand foot, eight thousand horse, 
and eighty-three elephants, and marched 
along the coast of Palestine to Gaza ; to 
which point Demetrius also repaired by sea, 
with a flees of one hundred and fifty ships 
of -war, and one hundred store-ships. This 
formidable expedition failed through mis- 
management on their side, met by the judg- 
ment and preparation shown on the part 
of Ptolemy. Antigonus retired from the 
Egyptian frontier in disgrace, not a little 
heightened by the avidity with which his 
o^vn soldiers embraced the opportunity of 
escaping from his austere rule to the mild 
and paternal sway of the Egyptian king. 

Meanwhile Seleucus had been consolidat- 
ing in the East that power which ultimately 
made him the greatest of the successors of 
Alexander. By 303 B.C. he had established 
his dominion over all the eastern provinces 
to the borders of India, and in that year was 
preparing for the invasion of that country, 
when affairs called his attention to the west, 
and he concluded a treaty with the Indian 
king, from whom he received five hundred 
elephants — a fact which we particularly 
notice as explaining the frequent presence 
; of that noble beast in the subsequent war- 
| fares in Syria and Palestine. Subsequent 
; supplies were afterwards obtained from the 
! same source, in order to keep up this fa- 
vourite force in the armies of the Syrian 
kings *. 

* The ancient Egyptians do not appear to have known 
the elephant, although quantities of the teeth were 
brought to the country and to Palestine. We do not re- 
member to have met with a single instance in which this 
animal is described as being figured on the old monuments 
of that country. 



At last the several kings, wearied out with 
the troubles and conflicts which the insa- 
tiable and turbulent ambition of Antigonus 
occasioned, made common cause against him, 
Seleucus taking the lead, and bringing the 
largest force into the field. The belligerents 
met and fought in battle, intended by all to 
be decisive, at Ipsus in Phrygia, in the year 
301 B.C. Antigonus brought into the field 
between seventy and eighty thousand foot, 
ten thousand horse, and seventy elephants; 
and Seleucus and his confederates had sixty- 
four thousand infantry, ten thousand five 
hundred cavalry, above one hundred chariots 
armed with scythes, and four hundred ele- 
phants. The courageous old man, Antigonus, 
now fourscore and upwards, behaved with 
his usual valour and conduct, but not with 
his usual spirit. Seleucus, by an adroit 
interposition of his elephants, managed to 
prevent Demetrius from properly support- 
ing his father with the cavalry, which he 
commanded ; and the final result was, that 
Antigonus fell on the field of battle pierced 
by many arrows, while Demetrius managed 
with a poor remnant of the army to escape 
to Ephesus. He survived seventeen years, 
and took an active part in the affairs of that 
time, but not so as to bring him under our 
future notice. 

This great victory was followed by a 
treaty between the four potentates who had 
weathered the storm which had raged since 
the death of Alexander, being Seleucus, 
Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Each 
was formally to assume the royal dignity, 
and to govern his provinces with imperial 
power. The distribution was made on the 
principle of each retaining what he already 
had, and taking his due share of the empire 
which Antigonus had lost with life. To Cas- 
sander was allotted Macedonia and Greece; 
to Lysimachus, Thrace, Bithynia, and some of 
the adjacent provinces; to Ptolemy, Libya, 
Egypt, Arabia Petraea, Palestine, and Ccele- 
Syria ; to Seleucus, all the rest, being in fact 
the lion's share — including many provinces in 
Syria, Asia-Minor, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, 
and the East as far as the frontiers of India. 

This settlement must have been highly 
satisfactory to the Jews, whom it restored to 



416 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V- 



the dominion of Ptolemy, with whose gene- 
rally beneficent government, and particular 
favour to themselves, they had every reason 
to be satisfied. The prospects of durable 
peace, under the shadow of so great a king, 
must also have been contemplated with pe- 
culiar satisfaction by a people who suffered 
so much of the horrors and penalties, with- 
out sharing in the contingent honours and 
benefits, of war. 

They were not disappointed. Ptolemy, 
now relieved from his long conflict, and 
settled firmly upon his throne, applied him- 
self with great and laudable diligence to the 
improvement of his dominions. One great 
point of his policy was really to attach to his 
rule the several nations which had become 
subject to it. From this policy sprang the 
favours which he showered upon the Jews, 
and the indulgence with which, notwith- 
standing their peculiarities, they were on 
all occasions treated. The most perfect re- 
ligious toleration was established by this 
eminent monarch, whose interest it was to 
harmonise the differences of religious prac- 
tice and opinion which existed between his 
Greek and Egyptian subjects : the religion 
of the Jews was comprehended in this in- 
dulgence ; and their synagogue was as much 
tolerated and respected as the temples of Isis 
and of Jupiter. Ptolemy made Alexandria 
the metropolis of his empire, and gave full 
effect to the intention of its great founder by 
taking such measures as ere long rendered it 
the first commercial city in the world. This, 
among others, was a circumstance calculated 
to attract the Jews to that city; as, first, 
their long absence from their native land — 
during the Captivity, and then the troubles 
of war in that land — troubles peculiarly 
unfavourable to the peaceful pursuits and 
hopes of agriculture — had already turned 
their attention towards commerce. 

Seleucus, between whose territories and 
those of Ptolemy, Palestine was now situ- 
ated, saw the wisdom of the policy followed 
by the king of Egypt, and applied himself 
with great vigour to work it out in his own 
dominions. In those dominions many fine 
cities had been entirely destroyed, and others 
greatly injured by the ravages of war. To 



repair these losses, Seleucus built many new 
cities, among which are reckoned sixteen 
which he, from his father, called Antiochia 
or Antioch ; nine to which he gave his own 
name ; six on which he bestowed that of 
his mother Laodicea ; six which he called 
Apamea after his first wife, and one after 
his last wife Stratonice. Of all these towns 
the most celebrated was the city of Antioch, 
on the Orontes in Syria, which became the 
metropolitan residence of all the succeeding 
kings, and, in a later day, of the Roman go- 
vernors ; and which has ever since survived, 
and which still exists, and retains some re- 
lative consequence by virtue of the corre- 
sponding decline of all prosperity and popu- 
lation in the country in which it is found. 
Its name will occur very often in the re- 
mainder of our narrative. Next to Antioch 
in importance was Seleucia on the Tigris, 
which may in fact be considered the capital 
of the eastern portion of tne empire. It was 
situated about fifty miles north-by-east of 
Babylon, twenty-three miles below the site 
of the present city of Baghdad, and just 
opposite to the ancient city of Ctesiphon. 
This city (founded in 293 b.c.) tended much 
to the final ruin and desolation of Babylon. 
Great privileges were granted to the citizens; 
and on this account many of the inhabitants 
of Babylon removed thither ; and after the 
transfer of the trade to Seleucia, these re- 
movals became still more frequent. It was 
in this manner that Babylon was gradually 
depopulated ; but the precise period when 
it became entirely deserted cannot now be 
ascertained. It may be interesting to note 
this, as many of the eastern Jews were in- 
volved in whatever transactions took place 
in this quarter, which, from the time of the 
Captivity to this day, has never been desti- 
tute of a large and often influential Jewish 
population. But now Babylon itself is not 
more desolate — is even less desolate — has 
more to mark it as the site of a great city 
of old times, than the superseding Seleucia, 
which only received existence in the last 
days of Babylon. We have ourselves walked 
over the ground it occupied, and found the 
site of the royal city only marked by the 
parallel embankments of ancient aqueducts, 



CHAP. III.] 



1'L.OM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



417 



and by the consolidated grit and debris which, 
devote to utter barrenness, in this primeval 
country, the spots which towns once occupied, 
as if man had branded the ground by the 
treading of his feet. 

In his newly founded towns it was the 
policy of Seleucus to induce as many as pos- 
sible of the Jews to settle by important pri- 
vileges and immunities, such as those which 
Ptolemy had extended to them. The conse- 
quence was that the Jews were attracted to 
these spots in such numbers, and especially 
to Antioch, that in them they formed nearly 
as large a proportion of the inhabitants as at 
Alexandria itself. 

In all this, we think it is not difficult to 
perceive a further development of the Divine 
plan, which now, as the times advanced, dic- 
tated the dispersion of numerous bodies of 
Jews among the Gentile nations — while the 
nation still maintained in its own land the 
standards of ceremonial worship and of doc- 
trine — with the view of making the nations 
acquainted with certain truths and great 
principles, which should work in their minds 
as leaven until the times of quickening ar- 
rived. 

During the time of Ptolemy Soter the 
prosperity of the Jews was much strengthened 
by the internal administration of the excellent 
high-priest Simon the Just. In 300 he suc- 




[P. Soter and his wife Berenice.] 

ceeded Onias I., who had in 321 succeeded 
Jaddua, the high-priest in the time of Alex- 
ander the Great. Simon repaired and forti- 
fied the city and temple of Jerusalem with 
strong and lofty walls ; and made a spacious 
cistern, or reservoir of water, " in compass as 
a sea."* He is reported to have completed 

* Ecclus. i. 1—3. The whole chapter, entitled "The 
praise of Simon, the son of Onias," is devoted to a splendid 
eulogium on his deeds and character. 



the canon of the Old Testament by the addi- 
tion of the books of Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, 
Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi. This is not 
unlikely, as also that the book of Chronicles 
was completed in its present state ; for the 
genealogy of David in the first book comes 
down to about the year 300 B.C. ; and it may 
also be remarked, that in the catalogue of 
high-priests as given in Kehemiah, Jaddua 
is mentioned in such a manner as to inti- 
mate that he had been for some time dead. 
The Jews also affirm that Simon was "the j 
last of the Great Synagogue," which some j 
ingeniously paraphrase into " the last pre- 
sident of the great council, or Sanhedrim, 
among the high-priests ;" f whereas it seems 
clear that no Sanhedrim at or before this 
time existed. And from the fact that this 
"great synagogue" is not (like the Sanhe- 
drim) described as being composed of seventy 
members, but of one hundred and twenty, 
among whom were Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, 
Nehemiah, and Malachi, it would appear 
that it rather denoted the succession of de- 
vout and patriotic men who distinguished 
themselves after the Captivity, by their la- 
bours towards the collection and revision of 
the sacred books, and the settlement and im- 
provement of the civil and religious institu- 
tions of their country, and of whom Simon, 
by completing the sacred canon, became the 
last. Simon died in 291 B.C., and was suc- 
ceeded by his son Eleazer. 

Not long after this (285 B.C.), the king 
of Egypt, having conceived just cause of 
displeasure against his eldest son Ptolemy 
Keraunus, took measures to secure the 
succession to his youngest son Ptolemy 




[P. Philadelphus and his sister-wife Arsinoe.] 

Philadelphus. His advanced age warned 
him that he had no time to lose ; he there- 

t Hales, ii. 538. 



E E 



418 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



fore resigned the diadem to Philadelphus 
('the brother-loving'), and enrolled himself 
among the royal life-guards. He died two 
years after (2S3 B.C.) at the age of eighty- 
four, forty years after the death of Alexander. 

As for P. Keraunus, he ultimately sought 
refuge at the court of Seleucus, by whom 
he was most kindly received and enter- 
tained ; but he justified the ill opinion of 
him on which his own father had acted by 
destroying his benefactor. This was in 280 
B.C., only seven months after Seleucus had 
consummated the greatness of his empire 
by the overthrow of Lysimachus, who had 
himself previously added the kingdom of 
Macedonia to his own of Thrace. Thus 
Seleucus became the possessor of three out of 
the four kingdoms into which the empire of 
Alexander had, on the defeat of Antigonus, 
been divided. After his death, P. Keraunus 
managed to seat himself on the Macedonian 
throne ; but the very next year he was taken 
prisoner and cut in pieces by the Gauls, who 
had invaded Macedonia. 

Seleucus was succeeded in what may be 
called the throne of Asia by his son Antiochus 
Soter. This prince, after he had secured the 
eastern provinces of the empire, endeavoured 
I to reduce the western, but his general Patro- 
] cles was defeated in Bithynia, and the loss 
I of his army disabled him from immediately 
prosecuting his claims upon Macedonia and 
Thrace. Meanwhile the sceptre of Macedonia 
was seized by the vigorous hands of Alexan- 
der Gonatus, a son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, 




[Antiochus Theos.] 



and consequently a grandson of Antigonus, 
and to him Antiochus at length felt himself 
constrained to cede that country ; and the 
family of Antigonus reigned there until the 
time of Perseus, the last king, who was con- 
quered by the Romans. Antiochus Soter died 



in 261 B.C., after nominating as his successor 
his second son Antiochus Theos (''the God'). 
This prince was his son by his mother-in-law 
Stratonice, whom his too indulgent father 
had divorced to please him. 

The accession of Antiochus II. took place 
about the middle of the reign of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus in Egypt. This last-named 
monarch was quite as tolerant and as 
friendly to the Jews as his father had been. 
He was a great encourager of learning and 
patron of learned men. Under his auspices 
was executed that valuable translation of 
the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, called the 
Septuagint, from the seventy, or seventy- 
two, translators said to have been employed 
thereon. Eleazer was still the high-priest, 
and appears to have interested himself much 
in this undertaking:, and was careful to 
furnish for the purpose correct copies of 
the sacred books. The date of 278 B.C. is 
usually assigned to this translation. Thus 
the Jewish Scriptures were made accessible 
to the heathen. It is unquestionable that 
copies of this version, or extracts from it, 
found their way in process of time into the 
libraries of the learned and curious of Greece 
and Rome ; and there is no means of cal- 
culating the full extent of its operation in 
opening the minds of the more educated and 
thoughtful class among the heathen to the 
perception of some of the great truths which 
they could learn only from that book, and 
which it was now becoming important that 
they should know. It was even a great I 
matter that they should have the means of 
knowing clearly what the Jews believed, 
whatever they may themselves have thought 
of that belief. This version soon came into 
common use among the Jews themselves 
everywhere, even in Palestine, the original j 
Hebrew having become a learned language, j 
Indeed, the quotations from the Old Testa- 
ment made by the Evangelists and Apostles, I 
and even by Christ himself, are generally, 
if not always, from this version. 

In the third year of Antiochus a long 
and bloody war broke out between him 
and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The latter king, 
bending under the weight of years, com- 
manded by his generals, while Antiochus, in 



CHAP. HI.] 



FBOM 420 B.C. 



TO 163 B.C. 



419 



the vigour of youth, led his armies in person. 
Neither monarch appears to have gained 
any very decided advantages over the other ; 
while we know that much was lost by An- 
tiochus; for, while his attention was engaged 
by wars in the west, the eastern provinces of 
his vast empire — Parthia, Bactria, and other 
provinces beyond the Tigris — revolted from 
Ms dominion: this was in 250 B.C., from which 
the foundation of the Parthian empire- way 
be dated ; but it is perhaps better, with the 
Parthians themselves, to date it from the en- 
suing reign, when they completely established 
their independence. It is here, however, we 
are to seek the real beginning of the Parthian 
empire, which was ultimately destined to set 
bounds to the conquests of the Romans, and 
to vanquish the vanquishers of the world. 
The immediate result was that Antiochus was 
obliged, in the year 249 B.C., to make peace 
with Philadelphus on such terms as he could 
obtain. These were, that he should repudiate 
his beloved queen, who was his half-sister, and 
marry Berenice, a daughter of Philadelphus, 
and that the first male issue of the marriage 
should succeed to the throne. 

As Philadelphus on his part gave for the 
dower of his daughter half the revenues of 
Palestine, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, the 
Jews may seem to have come partly under 
the dominion of Antiochus. But as the 
king retained the other half in his own 
hands, and as the revenues of Judea were 
always farmed by the high-priest, the cir- 
cumstance made no change in their condition. 
Besides, the arrangement was too soon broken 
up to produce any marked effect. These 
were the important nuptials between " the 
king of the north," and C: the king's daughter 
of the south," which the prophet Daniel had 
long before predicted*. It was only two 




[Seleucus Callinicus.] 
* Dan.xi.6. 



years after this (247 b.c) that Philadelphus 
died ; immediately on which Antiochus put 
away Berenice and restored his beloved 
Laodicea; but she, fearing his fickleness, 
poisoned him, and set her son Seleucus 
Callinicus [' illustrious conqueror'] upon the 
throne (246 b.c). On this Berenice sought 
shelter with her son (the heir by treaty) in 
the sacred groves of Daphne (near Antioch) ; 
but at the instigation of his mother, Calli- 
nicus tore her from that sanctuary, and slew 
her, with her infant son. 

Now Berenice was full sister to the new 
king of Egypt, Ptolemy III., surnamed 
Euergetesf, who immediately placed himself 




[Ptolemy EutYget.es.] 



at the head of his army to avenge her 
wrongs. He was eminently successful. He 
entered Syria, slew the queen Laodicea, and 
overran the whole empire as far as the Ti- 
gris on the east, and Babylon on the south J. 
On he marched, from province to province, 
levying heavy contributions, until commo- 
tions in Egypt obliged him to abandon his 
enterprise and return home. On his Way he 
called at Jerusalem, where he offered many 
sacrifices, and made large presents to the 
temple. There is little doubt but that the 
high-priest took the opportunity of pointing 

t We may add in a note that this title (the Benefactor) 
was conferred on Ptolemy by his Egyptian subjects on his 
return from his eastern expedition. He recovered and 
brought back, with other booty to an immense amount, 
2500 idolatrous images, chiefly those which Cambyjc-s had 
taken away from the Egyptians. When he restored the 
idols to their temples, the Egyptians manifested their gra- 
titude by saluting him with this title. They were less prone 
than the Greeks of Asia to deify their kings. 

X The inscription found at Adule by Cosmas gives a 
more extensive range to his operations, affirming that, after 
having subdued the west of Asia, he ultimately crossed the 
Euphrates, and brought under his dominion, not only Me- 
sopotamia and Babylonia, but Media, Persia, and the 
whole country as far as Bactria. As this needs more col- 
lateral support than it has received, we adopt the more 
limited statement in the text. 



E E 2 



420 

out to him those prophecies of Daniel* 
which had been accomplished in the late 
events and in his recent achievements ; and 
this may probably have been the cause of 
his presents and offerings. 

The high-priest of the Jews was then 
Onias II. Eleazer, the high-priest at the 
time the Greek translation of the Scriptures 
was made, died in 276 B.C., and- was succeeded 
not by his own son Onias, but by Manasses, 
a son of Jaddua. He died in 250 B.C., and 
Onias III. then became high-priest. As 
usual, Onias farmed the tribute exacted 
from Judea by the Egyptians. But, growing 
covetous as he advanced in years, he with- 
held, under one pretence or another, the 
twenty talents which his predecessors had 
been accustomed to pay every year to the 
king of Egypt as a tribute for the whole 
people. This went on for twenty-four years, 
and, the arrears then amounting to four 
hundred and eighty talents, the king deemed 
it full time to take energetic measures to 
secure the payment of this portion of the 
royal revenues. He sent an officer named 
Athenion to demand the payment of what 
was already due, and to require a more 
punctual payment in future, with the threat 
that, unless measures of compliance were 
taken, he would confiscate all the lands of 
Judea, and send a colony of soldiers to oc- 
cupy them. The infatuated priest was dis- 
posed to neglect the warning and brave the 
danger, which filled all the people with con- 
sternation. But the evils which might have 
been apprehended were averted through the 
policy and address of Joseph, the high-priest's 
nephew, who generously borrowed the money 
upon his own credit, paid the tribute, and 
so ingratiated himself at the Egyptian court 
that he obtained the lucrative privilege of 
farming the king's revenues, not only in 
Judea and Samaria, but in Phoenicia and 
Ccele-Syria. 

Seleucus Callinicus, in his emergencies, had 
promised to his younger brother Antiochus 
Hierax, who was governor of Asia Minor, the 
independent possession of several cities in 
that province, for his assistance in the war 
with P. Euergetes. But when he had (243 

* Dan. xi. 6—8. 



[BOOK. V. 

b.c.) obtained a truce of ten years from the 
Egyptian king, he refused to fulfil this en- 
gagement. This led to a bloody war between j 
the two brothers, in which Seleucus was so 
generally unsuccessful that it would appear 
as if the title of Callinicus [illustrious con- 
queror'] had been bestowed upon him in deri- 
sion. He was, however, ultimately successful 
through the losses and weakness which other 
enemies brought upon Antiochus Hierax ['the 
Hawk' — from his rapacity], who was in the 
end obliged to take refuge in Egypt, where 
he was put to death in 240 B.C. Towards the 
end of this war Mesopotamia appears to have 
been the scene of action ; for in that quarter 
occurred the battle in which eight thousand 
Babylonian Jews (subjects of Seleucus) and 
four thousand Macedonians defeated one 
hundred and twenty thousand Gauls whom 
Antiochus had in his payt. 

Seleucus Callinicus being now relieved 
from the western war, turned his attention | 
to the recovery of the eastern provinces 
which had revolted in the time of his father. 
Renewed troubles in Syria prevented any re- 
sult from his first attempt in 236 B.C. ; and 
in his second, in 230, he was defeated and 
taken prisoner by the Parthians, whose king, 
Arsaces, treated the royal captive with the < 
respect becoming his rank, but never set him 
at liberty. He died in 226 B.C. by a fall from 
his horse. On this event, Seleucus III. in- 
herited the remains of his father's kingdom. 
This prince was equally weak in body and 
mind, and therefore most unaptly surnamed 
Keraunus [' thunder ']. When a war broke 
out in 223 B.C., his imbecile conduct so pro- 
voked his generals, that he was poisoned by 
their contrivance. 

Of these troubles and dissensions in Syria, 
Ptolemy Euergetes, in Egypt, took due ad- 
vantage in strengthening and extending his 
own empire. In 222 B.C., the year after the j 
murder of Seleucus III., his reign was ter- fj 
minated through his murder by his own 
son Ptolemy, who succeeded him, and who, 
on account of this horrid deed, was ironi- j i 
cally surnamed Philopator ['father-loving']. 
P. Euergetes is popularly considered the last j 
good king of Egypt, which is true in the ! 

f Mace. viii. 20. 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



I CHAP. III.] 

sense that the succeeding Ptolemies governed 
! far worse than the first three of that name — 
j all of whom were j ust and humane men, and 

whose reigns were glorious and beneficent. 




[Ptolemy Philopator.] 

j If Euergetes was inferior in some respects to 
! Lagus and Philadelphus, he was more than 
J in the same degree superior to his own suc- 
j cessors. 

At this time the Jews had for about sixty 
I years enjoyed almost uninterrupted tranquil- 
j lity under the shadow of the Egyptian throne, 
j During this period circumstances led them 
j into much intercourse with the Greeks, who 
were their masters and the ruling people in 
Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and, in fact, in 
all the country west of the Tigris. A pre- 
dominance of Greeks and of Grecian ideas, 
which has dotted the surface of westernmost 
Asia with frequent monuments of Grecian 
art, was not without much effect upon the 
Jews in this period. Among other indica- 
tions, the increasing prevalence, in and after 
this period, of Greek proper names among 
the Jews, may be taken. There is ample 
evidence that the more opulent classes culti- 
vated the language, and imbibed some of the 
manners, of the Greeks. It is also apparent 
that some acquaintance with the Greek phi- 
losophers was obtained, and made wild work 
in Jewish minds. Nothing manifests this 
more clearly than the rise of the Sadducees, 
whose system was nothing more than a very 
awkward attempt to graft the negations of 
Greek philosophy upon the Hebrew creed. 
It confirms this view, that the sect of the 
Sadducees was never popular with the mass 
■ of the nation, but was always confined to 
; those whose condition in life brought them 
I :he most into contact with the notions of 
j the Greeks, the wealthy, noble, and ruling 
j classes. Priests — even high-priests — some- 
{ times adopted the views of this sect. 



421 

It has already been stated that the high- 
priest Simon the Just was counted as the 
last of " the great synagogue," who had ap- 
plied themselves to the great work of collect- 
ing, revising, and completing the canon of 
the Old Testament. To this followed " a new 
synagogue," which applied itself diligently 
to the work of expounding and comment- 
ing upon the completed canon. This school 
lasted until the time of Judah Hakkadosh, 
who, to prevent these comments or " tradi- 
tions" (which were deemed of equal authority 
with the text) from being lost, after the Dis- 
persion, committed them to writing, in the 
Mishna, which, with its comments, has since 
constituted the great law-book of the Jews, 
from which, even more than from the Scrip- 
tures, they have deduced their religious 
and civil obligations. The founder and first 
president of this school, or synagogue, was 
Antigonus Socho, or Soch^us. He (or, ac- 
cording to some accounts, his successor 
Joseph) was fond of teaching that God was 
to be served wholly from disinterested mo- 
tives, of pure love and reverence, founded on 
the contemplation of his infinite perfections, 
without regard to the prospects of future re- 
ward, or to the dread of future punishment. 
This was either misunderstood or wilfully per- 
verted by some of his scholars, and in par- 
ticular by Sadoc and Baithos, who declared 
their disbelief that there was any future 
state of reward or punishment. Perhaps 
they stopped at this ; but the views ulti- 
mately embodied in the creed of the sect 
which took its name from the first of these 
persons, inculcated that the soul was mortal 
like the body, and perished with it, and con- 
sequently that there was not, nor could be, 
any resurrection. They also held that there 
was no spiritual being, good or bad*. They 
rejected the doctrine of an overruling Pro- 
vidence, and maintained that all events re- 
sulted from the free and unconstrained ac- 
tions of men. That, like the Samaritans, 
they rejected all the sacred books save the 
Pentateuch, is inferred from the unsupported 
authority of a passage of doubtful interpre- 
tation in Josephust. And as there is some 

* Matt. xxii. 23; Acts xxiii. 8. 
f Antiq. xiii. 10, 6. 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



422 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. j 



evidence to the contrary, it is safer to con- 
clude that they admitted the authority of the 
other books, but ascribed to them an inferior 
value and importance than they did to the 
Pentateuch. But it is certain that they re- 
jected absolutely the "Traditions," to which 
such supreme importance was attached by 
the mass of the nation. This was a good 
thing in them ; and in this they agreed with 
Jesus Christ and his Apostles, who were op- 
posed to them and by them on every other 
point. In fact, it would seem as if this sect 
in its beginning was intended merely as an 
opposition to the Tradition party, which was 
likely to be regarded with apprehension by 
the more open and thinking minds. The 
doctrinal errors had no necessary connection 
with the anti-tradition zeal of the party, 
and were probably grafted on it through the 
speculative tendencies of some of its original 
leaders. 

After the murder of Seleucus Keraunus, 
who left no son, the kingdom of Syria fell 
to his brother Antiochus III., who had been 
brought up at Seleucia on the Tigris. He 
came to Antioch, and his reign was so pro- 
ductive in great events that he ultimately 
acquired the surname of "the Great." He 
carried on the wars against the revolted 
provinces with such success that he soon 
recovered almost all Asia Minor, Media, 
Persia, and Babylonia. The effeminate cha- 
racter of Ptolemy Philopator, who was a 
mean voluptuary, abandoned to the most 
shameful vices, and entirely governed by the 
creatures and instruments of his pleasures, 
led Antiochus to contemplate the feasibility 
of obtaining possession of the valuable pro- 
vinces of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. 
Great part of the first of these provinces, 
with the city of Damascus, he easily acquired, 
through the defection of Theodotian, the go- 
vernor — a brave man rendered a traitor by 
the desire of revenge, and by contempt for 
the character of his master. The campaign 
was terminated by a truce for four months, 
which circumstances made desirable for both 
parties before prosecuting the war. Negotia- 
tions for a peace were indeed entered into ; 
but as both parties claimed Coele-Syria and 
Palestine in virtue of the treaty by which 



j the empire of Alexander was divided after 
j the fall of Antigonus, the truce expired 
without anything having been concluded. 

The war was therefore resumed in 218 B.C. 
Antiochus marched into the disputed ter- 
ritory and carried all things before him. 
Forcing the passes of Lebanon, he penetrated 
into Phoenicia, and after securing the coast, 
marched into the interior, and brought under 
his power all the cities of Galilee ; after 
which he passed beyond Jordan and won the 
ancient territory of the tribes beyond that 
river, with the metropolis, Rabbath-Ammon, 
which Ptolemy Philadelphus had fortified, 
and named, after himself, Philadelphia. At 
the same time, Antiochus subjugated some of 
the neighbouring Arabs; and on his return 
threw garrisons into Samaria and some of 
the adjacent towns ; and at the close of this 
brilliant campaign, he took up his winter 
quarters in Ptolemais (afterwards Ceesarea). 

These large and repeated losses at length 
roused all the energies which Ptolemy was 
capable of exerting. He forsook his drunken 
revels, and, placing himself at the head of 
an army of seventy thousand infantry, five 
thousand cavalry, and seventy-three ele- 
phants, he marched from Pelusium through 
the desert, and encamped at Raphia, a place 
between Rhinoculura (El Arish) and Gaza. 
Antiochus, with the confidence of victory 
which his recent successes inspired, advanced 
to meet him at that place, with an army 
of sixty-two thousand infantry, six thousand 
cavalry, and one hundred and twenty ele- 
phants. He was totally defeated, with such 
loss that he made no attempt to repair it, 
but abandoned all his conquests and with- 
drew to Antioch. By a peace, concluded 
soon after, he relinquished all pretension 
to the disputed territories. Philopator now 
recovered all the former possessions of his 
crown without striking a blow, for the cities 
hastened to emulate each other in renewing 
their homage to him by their ambassadors. 
Among these the Jews, always partial to the 
Egyptian rule, were the most forward ; and 
the king was induced to pay a visit to Jeru- 
salem, as well as to the other principal cities. 
There he offered sacrifices according to the 
Jewish law, and presented gifts to the temple. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



423 



But, unhappily, the beauty of the building, 
and the peculiar order and solemnity of the 
worship, excited the curiosity of the king 
to see the interior. Simon II., who had but 
lately succeeded Onias II. in the high-priest- 
hood, remonstrated against this intention, 
incimating that it was unlawful even for j 
the priests to enter the inner sanctuary, j 
Philopator answered haughtily, that although 
they were deprived of that honour, he ought j 

j not ; and pressed forward to enter the sacred 
• t >lace. Bat while he was passing through 
the inner court for that purpose, he was 
• shaken like a. re* 1, and fell speechless to 

! the ground," overcome either by bis own 

! superstitious fears, or, as the historian seems 
to intimate, by a supernatural dread and 

i horror cast on him from above. He was 
carried out half dead, and speedily departed 

| from the city full of displeasure against the 
Jewish people. He therefore commenced a 
most barbarous persecution against the Jews 
in Egypt on his return home. In the first 

I place he caused a decree to be inscribed on 
brazen pillars at the palace gate, that none 
should enter there who did not sacrifice to 
the gods he worshipped — which effectually 
excluded the Jews from all access to his 
person. Then he deprived the Jews in 
Alexandria of the high civil privileges they 
had enjoyed, degrading them from the first 
to the third or last class of inhabitants. He 
also ordered them to be formally enrolled, 
and that at the time of their enrolment, the 
mark of an ivy-leaf (one of the insignia of 
his god, Bacchus) should be impressed upon 
them with a hot iron ; if any refused this 
mark they were to be made slaves ; and 
whoever opposed the decree was to be put 

' to death. Again, they were tempted to 

i apostacy by the promise of restoration to 
the rank of citizens of the first class ; but 

: of the many thousands of Jews then at 
Alexandria, only three hundred appear to 

| have submitted to the humiliating condition, 

j and these were held in such abhorrence by 
the majority of their countrymen, and were 
so pointedly shunned, and excluded from the 
society of their old associates, that the king, 
when acquainted with it, was highly enraged, 
and regarded this as an opposition to his 



authority ; he vowed to extirpate the whole 
nation. To begin with the Jews in Egypt, 
he ordered them all to be brought in chains 
to Alexandria. Having thus brought them 
all together, they were shut up in the Hippo- 
drome, which was a large enclosure outside 
the city, built for the purpose of horse-racing 
and other public amusements, where he in- 
tended to expose them as a spectacle, to be 
destroyed by elephants. At the appointed 
time, the people assembled in crowds, and 
the elephants were on the spot ; but the ef- 
fects of a drunken bout, the preceding night, 
prevented the attendance of the king, and 
caused a postponement of the show. The 
next day a similar disappointment proceeded 
from the same unseemly cause. But on the 
third, the king managed to be present, and 
the elephants were brought out after they 
had been intoxicated with wine and frankin- 
cense to render them more ferocious. But 
they spent their fury not on the unhappy 
Jews, but turned upon the spectators, of 
whom they destroyed great numbers. This, 
connected with some unusual appearances 
in the air, appeared to the king and his 
attendants so manifest an interposition of a 
Divine Power in behalf of the Jews, that he 
instantly ordered them to be set at liberty ; 
and fearful of having provoked the vengeance 
of Heaven, he hastened to restore the Jews 
to their former privileges by rescinding all 
the decrees he had issued against them. 
Now also, his better reason gaining sway ; 
considering that those who had so signally 
evinced their fidelity to their God were not 
likely to be unfaithful to their king, he 
bestowed upon them many marks of his 
munificence and confidence. Among other 
things, he abandoned to their disposal the 
three hundred apostates, who were speedily 
put to death by their offended brethren*. 

* It is right to apprise the reader that the whole of this 
account of the visit of Philopator to Jerusalem and its 
consequences, down to this point, is not in Josephus, but 
is given on the sole authority of the author of the third 
book of Maccabees. In all, there are five books of Mac- 
cabees, of which two only are included in our Apocrypha. 
The third, which relates solely to this persecution of the 
Jews by Ptolemy Philopator, exists in Greek, and is found 
in some ancient manuscripts of the Greek Septuagint, 
particularly in the Alexandrian and Vatican manuscripts. 
There is also a Syriac version of it from the Greek; but it 



424 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



Ptolemy Philopator died in 205 B.C., leaving 
his crown to Ptolemy Epiphanes, then a child 
five years of age. Meanwhile Antiochus III. 




[Ptolemy Epiphanes.] 



had won the surname of Great, by his eminent 
successes in the East, where he restored the 
ancient supremacy of the Seleucidge. At the 
death of Philopator, he had but recently re- 
turned from his eastern wars. He was not 
slow in perceiving the advantage which he 
might take of the infancy of the new king in 
accomplishing what had been one of the first 
i objects of his reign. This design again ex- 
posed unhappy Palestine to all the horrors of 
war. The first campaign put Antiochus in 
possession of the standing bone of contention, 
Coele-Syria and Palestine. It is remarkable 
that on this occasion the Jews relinquished 
their usual attachment to the Egyptian yoke, 
and took a very decided part with Antiochus. 
For this many reasons may be conceived, but 
none are distinctly known; we have, however, 
no doubt that one of them may be found in 
the indulgent consideration with which the 
J ews of Babylonia and other eastern provinces 
had been treated by Antiochus — a fact which 
could not fail to be known in Palestine and 
at Jerusalem. The next year, however, An- 
tiochus having been called away into Asia 
Minor, Palestine was speedily recovered by 

j lias never been inserted in the Vulgate, or in our English 
j Bibles, but English translations of it exist. It appears to 
j have been the work of an Alexandrian Jew ; and while we 
j admit that the book is full of absurdities, and that the 
authority is of very little value in itself, yet we think that 
j in the outline of facts, as related in the text, there is so much 
I appearance of probability, and so many small agreements 
j with the accounts which history has preserved of the 
manners and ideas and circumstances of the times, as well 
as with the character of the king, that we are disposed to 
regard it as substantially true. The silence of Josephus is 
indeed a suspicious circumstance, to which we are willing 
that due weight should be given ; but it will be noticed by 
every reader that the history of Josephus is remarkably 
brief at this period. 



Scopas, the Egyptian general, who did not 
fail to make the Jews aware of his con- 
sciousness of the favour to Antiochus which 
they had manifested. The Egyptians were, 
however, soon again driven out of the coun- 
try by Antiochus, and on this occasion such 
important services were rendered him by 
the Jews, and when he came to Jerusalem 
(198 b.c) so lively were their demonstra- 
tions of joy, that the king, to confirm their 
attachment to his government, and to re- 
ward their services, granted them many im- 
portant favours ; and, aware that there were 
no points on which they were more anxious 
than in what concerned their city and temple, 
he declared his intention to restore the city 
to its ancient splendour and dignity, and 
thoroughly to repair the temple at his own 
cost ; he guaranteed the inviolability of the 
sacred place from the intrusion of strangers ; 
and by liberal grants, he made ample provi- | 
sion for the due and orderly performance of 
the sacred services. Antiochus also expressed 
his confidence in the attachment of the Jews 
by establishing colonies of them, on very 
advantageous terms, in Phrygia, Lydia, and 
other districts of doubtful fidelity — a circum- 
stance which accounts for the great number 
of Jews scattered through those countries at 
the preaching of the gospel*. But it was 
the destiny of Antiochus to come into con- 
tact with the iron power which was ere long 
to break in pieces all the kingdoms of the 
earth, and to make their glory a vain thing. 
The Romans had already become great, and 
began to interfere with their usual haughti- 
ness in the affairs of the East. The success- 
ful termination of the second Punic war had 
covered them with renown, and had spread 
their fame far and wide; and already they 
had indicated to sagacious persons, by the 
reduction of Macedonia to the state of a 
subject kingdom, the ultimate tendencies 
of their great and still increasing power. 
Antiochus regarded this phenomenon with 
some apprehension, and perceiving, at the 
same time, what appeared advantageous op- 
portunities of recovering in the north all 
that had belonged to the first Seleucus, he 
felt disposed to bring his southern contest to 

* 1 Pet. i. 1 ; James i. 1. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 1G3 B.C. 



a conclusion. He therefore temporised with, 
the Egyptians, whose power he had greatly 
underrated, and made an offer of his beauti- 
ful daughter Cleopatra in marriage with the 
young king of Egypt, as soon as he should ! 
become of age; promising, as her dower, to I 
restore the provinces of Ccele-Syria and Pa- 
lestine, which he had wrested from Egypt. 
The princess was accordingly betrothed to 
P. Epiphanes ; but the marriage did not ac- 
tually take place until 192 B.C., when the 
young monarch reached the eighteenth year 
of his age. 

Antiochus availed himself of this settle- 
ment of affairs to prosecute his other plans. 
He reduced the maritime Greek cities of 
Asia Minor, and, crossing the Hellespont, 
wrested the Chersonese from the weakened 
hands of the Macedonian king. This brought 
him into direct and fatal collision with the 
Romans. And here it may be observed, 
that long before this the political saga- 
city of Ptolemy Philadelphus had detected 
the nascent greatness of the Roman state, 
and had anxiously cultivated its friendship. 
' This also had been the policy of his suc- 
cessors ; and the guardians of the young 
king, when apprehensive of the danger 
of Antiochus, had placed him under the 
guardianship of the republic. 

When Antiochus had passed into Europe 
and taken possession of Thrace, the Romans 
sent an embassy to require restitution not 
only of all he had taken from Philip of 
Macedon, but of all that he had taken from 
their ward the king of Egypt. The Syrian 
king answered the requisition as haughtily 
as it was made ; and it was manifest that 
an appeal to arms could not be far distant. 
What brought on the actual conflict was the 
passage of Antiochus into Greece at the invi- 
tation of the iEtolians, who made him their 
commander-in-chief. In Greece his proceed- 
ings were not taken with that ability which 
distinguished the earlier part of his career, 
and in 191 B.C. he was utterly routed at 
Thermopylae, and compelled to withdraw 
from Europe by the consul Acilius Glabrio. 
The marriage of his daughter with Ptolemy 
had been completed the year before this at 
Raphia, but he still retained possession of 



the provinces to be ceded*, and endeavoured 
to corrupt his daughter to betray the in- 
terests of her husband. But he was disap- 
pointed. She was more attached to Ptolemy 
than to her father : and, being probably dis- 
satisfied at his breach of promise, she joined 
her husband in an embassy to Rome in 191 
b.c, to congratulate the Romans on driving 
Antiochus out of Greece, and to assure the 
senate of the readiness of the king and queen 
to conform themselves to its directions. 

Antiochus was now driven to seek peace 
with Rome; but the terms which they offered 
were so hard that he could not bring himself 
to accept them. In all human probability 
he had brought himself into this condition 
by his inability to appreciate the value of 
the advice tendered to him by Hannibal, 
who, expelled from Carthage, had in 195 b.c 
sought refuge at his court ; and who, while 
he encouraged his enmity to the Romans, 
had exhorted him to make Italy the seat 
of the war. In 190 B.C., Cornelius Scipio 
(consul) assisted by his brother Africanus, 
passed over into Asia to conduct the war 
against Antiochus. Under their able manage- 
ment, it was soon brought to a conclusion, 
and the Syrian king was compelled from his 
capital of Antioch to sue for peace, which he 
obtained on very humiliating terms, but not 
essentially harder than those which he had 
at first refused. He relinquished all Asia 
Minor west of the Taurus ; he agreed to pay 
all the expenses of the war, estimated at 
eighteen thousand Euobic talents, by regu- 
lated instalments ; he was to deliver up his 
elephants and his ships of war (excepting 
twelve) to the Romans ; and he was to give 
into their hands Hannibal and other eminent 
foreigners who had sought protection at his 
court. The aged Carthaginian and another 
contrived to make their escape; but the rest 
were given up, together with the twelve host- 
ages for the observance of the treaty, among 
whom the king's younger son, Antiochus, 
surnamed Epiphanes, was one. After this, 

* Jerome and Appian say that Antiochus did surrender 
these provinces; and Josephus appears to concur with 
them, intimating that the revenues were paid to the Egyp- 
tian king. (Ant. xii. 4, 1.) But Polybius denies it; and 
this denial is confirmed by the fact that they still remained 
in the possession of the sons and successors of Antiochus. 



I 426 

Antiochus withdrew to the eastern provinces 
of his empire, where he endeavoured to col- 
lect the arrears of tribute due to him, to de- 
fray his heavy engagements to the Romans. 
There he was slain, two years after, by the 
natives of Elymais in Persia, when he at- 
| tempted to seize the treasures contained in 
| their rich temple. This was in 187 B.C., 
j in the fifty-second year of his age, and the 
thirty-seventh of his reign. The leading 
events of his reign had been foreshown by 
Daniel (xi. 13—19). 

Simon II., who was high-priest of the Jews 
at the time of the unhappy visit of Ptolemy 
IV. to Jerusalem, died in 195 B.C., after 
an administration of twenty-two years. He 
was succeeded by his son Onias III. Onias 
was a person of great piety, and of mild 
and amiable disposition, and well worthy of 
better times than those in which he lived, 
and of a better end than it was his lot to 
experience. During the first years of his 
administration, when his excellent inten- 
tions received full effect under the favour- 
able auspices of Antiochus and his successor, 
" the holy city was inhabited in all peace, 
and the laws were kept very well." The na- 
tion was also at this time held in such high 
estimation that the sovereigns of the neigh- 
bouring countries courted its friendship, and 
made magnificent offerings to the temple. 
And we are persuaded that this was not 
merely on account of the Jews, but with the 
design of honouring and with the hope of 
propitiating their God, Jehovah, whose fame 
was by this time widely extended among the 
nations, and his power acknowledged and 
feared by many of them. 

Seleucus IV., surnamed Philopator, the 
eldest son of Antiochus the Great, succeeded 
to the throne of his father, and to the heavy 
obligations under which he lay to the Romans. 
He was as well disposed towards the Jews as 
his father had been ; and, notwithstanding 
his embarrassments, gave orders that the 
charges of the public worship should con- 
inue to be defrayed out of his own treasury. 
But subsequently, upon the information of 
Simon, a Benjamite, who was made governor 
of the temple, and had quarrelled with Onias, 
that the treasury of the Jerusalem temple 



[book v. 

was very rich, and abundantly more than 
sufficient to supply the sacrifices and obla- 
tions, the king, who was greatly straitened 
for money to raise the amount required by 
the Romans, sent his treasurer Heliodorus to 
seize and bring him the reported treasure. 
Heliodorus concealed the object of his journey 
until he reached Jerusalem, when he made 
it known to the high-priest, and demanded 
the quiet surrender of the money. Onias in- 
formed him, in reply, that there was indeed 
considerable treasure in the temple ; but by 
no means of such large amount as had been 
reported. Great part of it consisted of holy 
gifts, and offerings consecrated to God, and 
the appropriation of which could not be dis- 
turbed without sacrilege. The rest had been 
placed there by way of security, for the re- 
lief of widows and orphans, who claimed it 
as their property ; and a considerable sum 
had been deposited there by Hyrcanus (the 
son of that Joseph who obtained the farm- 
ing of the revenues from Ptolemy Euergetes, 
as before related), a person of great opulence 
and high rank. He added that, being by vir- 
tue of his office the guardian of this wealth, 
he could not consent to its being taken from 
the right owners, and thereby disgrace his 
office and profane the sanctity of that holy 
place which was held in reverence by all the 
world. Determined to fulfil his mission, 
whatever impression this statement may 
have made upon his mind, Heliodorus 
marched directly to the temple, and was 
there vainly opposed by the high-priest and 
the other ministers of the sacred services. 
The outer gates were ordered to be de- 
molished ; and the whole city was in the 
utmost agonies of apprehension. But when 
Heliodorus was about to enter, at the head 
of his Syrians, he was struck with a panic 
terror, similar to that which Ptolemy Philo- 
pator had before experienced, and, falling to 
the ground, speechless, he was carried off for 
dead by his guard. Onias prayed for him, 
and he recovered, and made all haste tc quit 
the city. His plan being thus frustrated, 
the guilty Simon had the effrontery to charge 
Onias himself with having procured this visit 
from Heliodorus ; some believed it ; and in 
consequence there arose hostile conflicts be- 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. III.] 

tween the parties of Onias and Simon, in 
which many lives were lost. At last Onias 
resolved to proceed himself to Antioch, and 
j lay the whole matter before Seleucus. He 
j was favourably received by the king, who 
j heard and credited his statements, and, in 
< consequence, decreed the banishment of Simon 
from his native country. This was in 176 b.c. 
I In the year following Seleucus was induced 
| to send his son Demetrius as an hostage to 
! Rome, to relieve his own brother Antiochus, 
who had now been twelve years in that city. 
Demetrius had departed, and Antiochus was 
not come ; and the absence of the two who 
stood next the throne afforded Heliodorus an 
opportunity of conspiring against his master, 
whom he removed by poison, and himself 
'■ assumed the government. Antiochus was 
visiting Athens on his way home, when he 
heard of this. He immediately applied him- 
self to the old enemy of his father, Eumenes, 
king of Pergainos* (to whom the Romans 
had consigned the greater part of the terri- 
tory in Asia Minor, which they compelled 
Antiochus the Great to cede) who, with his 
brother Attalus, was easily induced to assist 
him against the usurper. They succeeded, 
and their success placed the brother instead 
of the son of Seleucus upon the throne of 
Syria, with the concurrence of the Romans. 

Antiochus IV. was scarcely settled on the 
throne before Jesus, or, by his Greek name, 
Jason t, repaired to Antioch, and, availing 




[Antiochus Epiphanes.] 

himself of the penury of the royal treasury, 
tempted the new king by the offer of four 

* The founder of the celebrated library at Pergamos, 
and the reputed inventor of parchment. 

t Most persons of consequence had now two names, one 
native Hebrew name, used among their own countrymen, 
and another Greek (as much as possible like the other in 
sound or meaning) used in their intercourse with the 
heathen. 



427 



hundred and forty talents of silver to depose 
the excellent Onias III. from the high-priest- 
hood, and to appoint himself in his place. 
He also obtained an order that Onias should 
be summoned to Antioch, and commanded to 
dwell there. Finding how acceptable money 
was to the king, Jason offered one hundred 
and fifty talents more for, and obtained, the 
privilege of erecting at Jerusalem a gymna- 
sium, or place for such public sports and ex- 
ercises as were usual among the Greeks, as 
well as for permission to establish an academy 
in which Jewish youth might be brought up 
after the manner of the Greeks ; and also the 
important privilege of making what J ews he 
pleased free of the city of Antioch. The ob- 
vious object of all this was as opposite as 
possible to that of the Mosaic institutions. 
It was intended to facilitate the commixture 
of the Jews with foreigners, and to lessen the 
dislike with which the Greeks were disposed 
to regard a people so peculiar and so exclusive- 
This might have been a good design under 
general considerations of human policy, but 
was calculated to be most injurious and fatal 
as respected the Jews, whose institutions de- 
signedly made them a peculiar people, and 
whatever tended to make them otherwise 
must needs have been in counteraction of 
the great principle of their establishment. 
The effects which resulted from the exertions 
of Jason, after he had established himself in 
the high-priesthood, were such as might have 
been foreseen. The example of a person in 
his commanding position drew forth and gave 
full scope to the more lax dispositions which 
existed among the people, especially among 
the younger class, who were enchanted with 
the ease and freedom of the Grecian customs, 
and weary of the restraints and limitations of 
their own. Such as these abandoned them- 
selves with all the frenzy of a new excite- 
ment, from which all restraint had been 
withdrawn, to the licence which was offered 
to them. The exercises of the gymnasium 
seem to have taken their minds with the 
force of a fascination. The priests neglected 
their service in the temple to be present at 
these spectacles. It is well known that some 
of these exercises were performed naked ; 
and it is related that many of the Jewish 



FKOM 420 B.C. TO 1.63 B.C. 



428 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. 



competitors found means to efface the marks 
of circumcision, that they might not be dis- 
tinguished from other people. In the Greek 
cities of Asia, in which Jews were settled, 
this became a common practice among those 
young men who wished to distinguish them- 
i selves in the sports of the gymnasium*. 
| We allude to this as a striking illustration 
| of the extent in which this rite operated in 
| fulfilling its design of separating the Jews 
! from other people. The year after his pro- 
j motion Jason sent some young men, on whom 
j he had conferred the citizenship of Antioch, 
| to assist at the games which were celebrated 
at Tyre (in the presence of Antiochus) in 
honour of Hercules. They were entrusted 
with a large sum of money, to be expended 
in sacrifices to that god. But even the least 
scrupulous of the high-priest's followers were 
not prepared to go to this extent with him, 
and instead of obeying their instructions, 
they presented the money to the Tyrians 
as a contribution towards the repair of their 
fleet. 

Jason only enjoyed his ill-gotten dignity 
for three years. His younger brother Onias, 
or by his Greek name Menelaus, having been 
sent to Antioch with tribute, took advantage 
of the opportunity to ingratiate himself with 
Antiochus, and by offering three hundred 
talents more than Jason had paid, succeeded 
in getting himself appointed to the high- 
priesthood in his room. But he was re- 
pulsed in his attempt to assume that high 
office, and returned to Antioch, where he 
induced the king to establish him by force, 
by professing for himself and his associates 
an entire conformity to the religion of the 
Greeks. Jason was in consequence expelled 
by an armed force, and compelled to retire 
to the land of the Ammonites, leaving the 
pontificate to his still less scrupulous brother. 

Menelaus found that he had over-taxed his 
resources in the payment he had agreed to 
make for his promotion, and in consequence 
of the non-payment, he was summoned to 
Antioch by the king. Antiochus was absent 
when he arrived, and he soon learned that 
there was no hope of his retaining the favour 

* To this practice allusions are made by St. Paul, Rom. 
ii. 25; 1 Cor. vii. 18. 



of the king unless the payment was com- 
pleted. Having exhausted his own coffers 
as well as credit, he privately sent to his 
brother Lysimachus (whom he had left as 
his representative at Jerusalem) to withdraw 
some of the sacred vessels of gold from the 
temple, to sell them at Tyre and the neigh- 
bouring cities, and send him the amount. 
This disgraceful affair was not managed with 
such secrecy but that it came to the know- 
ledge of the deposed high-priest, Onias III., 
who was still residing at Antioch, much re- 
spected by the numerous Jews of that city, 
before whom he spoke of this sacrilege in 
such strong language as threw them into 
such a state of ferment and displeasure as 
was likely to prove dangerous to Menelaus. 
He therefore, by bribery, prevailed on An- 
dronicus, the king's deputy at Antioch, to 
put him to death. Onias, apprised of these 
intrigues, had taken refuge in the sanctuary 
of Daphne, near Antioch; but was induced to 
quit it by the assurances and promises he re- 
ceived from Andronicus, and was barbarously 
murdered as soon as he had passed the sacred 
bounds. This atrocious deed raised a terri- 
ble outcry among the Jews at Antioch, who 
hastened to make their complaints to the 
king on his return to that city. Antiochus, 
to do him justice, was much affected, and 
shed tears when he heard them. He pro- 
mised justice, and performed it ; for, after 
proper investigation, Andronicus was stripped 
of his purple, and put to death on the 
very spot where Onias had been murdered. 
Menelaus, the more guilty of the two, found 
means to escape the storm which destroyed 
the agent of his crime. But the sums of 
money which were necessary to enable him 
to maintain his credit, obliged his brother 
Lysimachus to resort to such repeated and 
unheard-of exactions, violence, and sacrilege, 
that the people of Jerusalem rose against 
him, scattered like chaff the three thousand 
men he had got to defend him, and, when 
he himself fled to the treasury of the temple, 
pursued and slew him there. 

Antiochus having soon after come to Tyre, 
the J ewish elders sent three venerable depu- 
ties thither to justify this act, and to accuse 
Menelaus as the author of all the troubles 



chap, in.] 



FROM 420 B.C. 



TO 163 B.C. 



429 



which had happened in Judea and Antioch. 
The case which they made out was so strong, 
and was heard with so much attention by 
the king, that Menelaus felt greatly alarmed 
for the result. He therefore applied himself 
to the king's favourite, Ptolemy Macron, and 
promised him so large a sum, that he was in- 
duced to watch the inconstant temper of the 
king, and availed himself of an opportunity 
of getting him not only to absolve Menelaus, 
but to condemn the three Jewish deputies to 
death. This most unjust and horrid sentence 
Was immediately executed. This terrible 
crime shocked the whole nation, and was ab- 
horrent even to foreigners, for the Tyrians 
ventured to express their sense of the wrong, 
by giving an honourable burial to the mur- 
dered men. The ultimate effect was to make 
Antiochus himself a sharer in the aversion 
with which Menelaus was regarded by the 
nation ; but at the same time the paramount 
influence of that guilty person with the king 
seemed to be so clearly manifested, that all 
further notion of resisting his authority was 
abandoned, and he was enabled to resume 
his station at Jerusalem. This was greatly 
facilitated by the presence of the king him- 
self with a powerful army in the country, 
for which circumstance we must now proceed 
to account. 

It will be remembered that the king of 
Egypt, Ptolemy Epiphanes, had been mar- 
ried to Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the 
Great, and sister of the present Antiochus. 
Ptolemy was taken off by poison in 181 
B.C., after a profligate and troubled reign of 
twenty-four years. He left three children, 
Ptolemy Philometor, Ptolemy Physcon, and 
Cleopatra, who was successively married to 
her two brothers. 

Ptolemy VI., surnamed Philometor (' mo- 
ther-loving '), was but a child at the death 
of his father, and the government was con- 




[Ptolemy Philometor.] 



ducted with ability by his mother Cleopatra. 
But she died in 173 B.C., on which the re- 
gency devolved on Eulgeus the eunuch, and 
Lennasus, the prime minister, the tutors of 
the young prince. They immediately ad- 
vanced a claim to the possession of Coele- 
Syria and Palestine, on the ground that they 
had been secured to Ptolemy Lagus by the 
partition treaty of 301 B.C., and that they 
had again been given by Antiochus the Great 
in dowry with his daughter Cleopatra on her 
becoming queen of Egypt. Antiochus refused 
to listen to such demands ; and both parties 
sent deputies to Rome to argue their respective 
claims before the senate. 

When Philometor had completed his four- 
teenth year, he was solemnly invested with 
the government, on which occasion embassies 
of congratulation were sent from all the 
neighbouring nations. Apollonius, the am- 
bassador of Antiochus, was instructed to take 
the opportunity of sounding the dispositions 
of the Egyptian court ; and when this person 
informed Antiochus that he was viewed as 
an enemy by the Egyptians, he immediately 
proceeded to Joppa, to survey his frontiers 
towards Egypt, and to put them in a state 
of defence. On this occasion he paid a visit 
to Jerusalem. The city was illuminated, 
and the king was received by Jason (who 
was then high-priest) with every demonstra- 
tion of respect. Afterwards he returned to 
Antioch through Phoenicia. 

Having completed his preparations for war, 
Antiochus, in 171 B.C., led his army along the 
coast of Palestine, and gave the Egyptians a 
signal overthrow at Pelusium. He then left 
garrisons on the frontier, and withdrew into 
winter-quarters at Tyre. It was during his 
stay there that the deputies arrived to com- 
plain of Menelaus, and were put to death, as 
just related. In the spring of the next year 
(170 B.C.) Antiochus undertook a second ex- 
pedition against the Egyptians, and attacked 
them by sea and land. He defeated them 
on the frontiers, and took Pelusium. After 
his victory he might have cut the Egyptian 
army in pieces, but he behaved with such 
humanity as gained him great favour with 
the Egyptians. At length all surrendered 
to him voluntarily; and with a small body 



430 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



of troops he overran all the country except 
Alexandria, and obtained possession of the 
person of the young king, whom he treated 
with apparent consideration and regard. 

While Antiochus- was thus employed, a ru- 
mour of his death before Alexandria reached 
Palestine, on which the deposed high-priest, 
Jason, quitted the land of the Ammonites, 
and with a party, assisted by friends within, 
surprised Jerusalem^ massacred the citizens, 
drove his brother Menelaus into the castle, 
and possessed himself of the principality. 
But he was speedily compelled to quit the 
city and country, at the news that Antiochus 
was alive, and marching with a powerful 
army against Jerusalem. After wandering 
from one place to another, a fugitive and a 
vagabond, Jason at last perished miserably, a 
refugee in the strange land of Lacedaemonia, 
The news of this movement had been re- 
ported to Antiochus with such exaggeration 
as led him to conclude that Judea had re- 
volted ; and being further provoked by hear- 
ing that the Jews had made public rejoicings 
at the news of his death, he marched in great 
wrath from Egypt, took Jerusalem by assault, 
destroyed eighty thousand persons, plundered 
the temple of all its treasures, vessels, and 
golden ornaments, and carried away one 
thousand eight hundred talents to Antioch. 

P. Philometor being now actually under 
the power of Antiochus, the people of Alex- 
andria proclaimed his brother king under 
the name of P. Euergetes II. ; but who was 




[P. Physeon.] 



afterwards nick-named Physeon [' big-belly '] 
on account of his corpulency. This afforded 
Antiochus a pretext for returning the next 
year (169 B.C.) to Egypt with the declared 
intention of supporting P. Philometor in the 
throne, but with the real purpose of bringing 
the whole country under his power. At the 
end, however, perceiving that the conquest 



of Alexandria would be an undertaking of 
great difficulty, he withdrew to Memphis, 
and affected to deliver up the kingdom to 
Philometor, and returned to Antioch. But 
as he retained in his own hands Pelusium, 
the key of the kingdom on the side of Syria, 
his ulterior designs were transparent to Phi- 
lometor, who therefore made an agreement 
with Physeon that they should share the go- 
vernment between them and resist Antiochus 
with their united power, and also that a joint 
embassy should be sent to Rome to implore 
the protection of the Republic against their 
uncle. 

This brought on a fourth invasion of Egypt 
by Antiochus (168 B.C.), who now threw off 
the mask he had hitherto chosen to wear, 
and declared himself the enemy of both 
the brother kings. He took possession of 
all the country as far as Alexandria, and 
then advanced towards that city. He was 
within four miles thereof, when he was met 
at Eleusis, by the ambassadors which the 
Roman republic had sent to adjust these 
differences. And this they did in the usual 
summary manner of that arrogant people. 
At the head of the ambassadors was Popilius 
Lsenas, whom Antiochus had known during 
his thirteen years 1 residence at Rome. Re- 
joiced to see him, Antiochus stretched forth 
his arms to embrace him. But the Roman 
sternly repelled the salute, demanding first 
to receive an answer to the written orders 
of the senate, which he delivered. The king- 
intimated that he would confer on the matter 
with his friends, and acquaint the ambas- 
sadors with the result, on which Popilius 
drew with his staff a circle around the king- 
on the sand, and said, " I require your answer 
before you quit this circle." The king was 
confounded; but after a moment of rapid and 
condensed deliberation, .he bowed his proud 
head, and said, falteringly, " I will obey 
the senate ! " On which Popilius, who had 
hitherto seen only the king of Syria, recog- 
nised the friend, and extended to him his 
hand. Perhaps this conduct in either party 
would not have occurred the year, or even 
the month before ; but the Romans had just 
concluded their war with Perseus, and made 
Macedonia a Roman province, and the am- 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B.C. 



431 



bassadors had waited at Delos to learn the 
issue of this war before they sailed for 
Egypt- 

Antiochus obeyed the senate by imme- 
diately withdrawing his forces from Egypt. 
On his way homeward he marched along 
the coast of Palestine, and he despatched 
Apollonius, his general, with twenty-two 
thousand men to vent his mortification and 
fury upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
which, as well as the rest of the province, 
| had for two years been groaning under the 
j tyranny and rapacity of Philip, the Phrygian 
< governor, Cf more barbarous than his master," 
| and of Menelaus the apostate high-priest, 
" worse than all the rest." Apollonius came 
to Jerusalem, and as his men remained quiet, 
and he was himself known as the collector of 
the tribute in Palestine, and as such usually 
attended by an armed force, his hostile in- 
tentions were not suspected by the Jews. 
All things remained quiet until the Sabbath, 
on which day, it was known, the Jews of 
that age would not fight even in self-defence. 
The soldiers were then let loose, and scoured 
! the streets, slaughtering all they met, who 
; suffered themselves meekly to be slain, none 
I being found who attempted to stand on their 
defence. The women and children were 
spared, to be sold for slaves. All the streets 
of Jerusalem, and the courts of the temple, 
flowed with blood ; the houses were pillaged, 
and the city wall thrown down. Apollonius 
then demolished all the buildings near Mount 
| Zion, and with the materials strengthened 
the fortifications of the citadel, which he 
furnished with a garrison, and held under 
his own command. This castle was so situ- 
ated as to give the garrison complete com- 
mand of the temple ; and the remains of the 
people would no longer visit the sanctuary, 
or the priests perform the public services of 
religion. Accordingly, in the month of June, 
167 B.C., the daily sacrifice ceased, and Jeru- 
salem was soon completely deserted, as the 
surviving inhabitants fled to the cities of the 
neighbouring Gentiles. 

An edict was now issued at Antioch, and 
proclaimed in all the provinces of Syria, 
commanding the inhabitants of the whole 
empire to worship the gods of the king, and 



to acknowledge no religion but his, with 
the declared object " that all should become 
one people." Antiochus was unquestionably 
a madman. This is not doubted by any one 
who has studied the whole of his history, which 
it has been no part of our duty to relate; 
and it is surely not very necessary to analyse 
the interior motives of a madman's acts. 
Hales fancies that "this general persecution 
seems to have been raised by Antiochus, not 
from any regard to his own religion, but 
from a regular plan and deep-laid scheme 
of plundering the temples throughout his 
dominions, after he had suppressed their 
worship. For the temples were not only 
enriched by the offerings of the votaries, 
but from their sanctity were the great banks 
of deposit, and the grand magazines of com- 
merce." But there was no general persecu- 
tion, although the edict was general in its 
terms. The cities containing the wealthiest 
temples already worshipped ithe gods of 
Greece ; and it must have been known, as 
proved to be the fact, that none of the other 
pagan nations would make much difficulty 
in complying with the royal edict. It must 
have been known, in fact, that none but 
the Jews were likely to oppose themselves 
to the operation of this decree ; and we 
are, therefore, not disposed to look for any 
deeper cause than the insane abhorrence 
which Antiochus had conceived against that 
people, and which he could not safely ma- 
nifest without bringing them into a condi- 
tion of apparent contumacy, which might, 
in some degree, excuse, in the eyes of the 
heathen, his contemplated severities against 
them. 

The pagans generally, as we have inti- 
mated, found no difficulty in complying 
with the royal edict. The Samaritans, who 
were anxious to claim a Jewish origin in the 
time of Alexander, now wrote to Antiochus 
to inform him that they were Sidonians, and 
offered to dedicate their temple on Mount 
Gerizim to Jupiter Xenius, " the defender of 
strangers." Even many Jews submitted to 
the edict for fear of punishment, and a still 
greater number, long attached to the customs 
of the Greeks, were glad to avail themselves 
of the apparent compulsions under which 



432 



THE BIELE HISTORY. 



[book t. 



they were now placed. But the better part 
of the people fled, and kept themselves 
concealed. An old man of the name of 
Athenaeus was sent to Jerusalem to instruct 
the Jews in the Greek religion, and to com- 
pel the observance of its rites. He dedicated 
the temple to Jupiter Olympius, and on the 
altar of Jehovah he placed a smaller altar 
to be used in sacrificing to the heathen god. 
This new altar, built by order of the desolater, 
Antiochus, is what Daniel alludes to when 
he speaks of the " abomination that maketh 
desolate,"* or "abomination of desolation," 
as Jahn prefers reading it. This altar was set 
up on the fifteenth day of the month Cisleu 
(November-December), and the heathen sa- 
crifices were commenced .on the twenty-fifth 
of the same month. Circumcision, the keep- 
ing of the Sabbath, and every peculiar ob- 
servance of the law, was made a capital of- 
fence ; and all the copies of the law which 
could be found were taken away, defaced, 
torn in pieces, and burned. The reading of it 
was forbidden; and it is said to have been 
at this time that the Jews first took to 
the public reading in the synagogues, of 
the other books of Scripture, as substitutes 
for the interdicted Pentateuch, which usage 
they afterwards retained, when the reading 
of the law was restored. Groves were conse- 
crated, and idolatrous altars erected in every 
city, and the citizens were required to offer 
sacrifices to the gods, and to eat swine's 
flesh every month on the birth-day of the 
king; and on the feast of Bacchus the Jews 
were compelled to join in the celebration, 
and to walk in procession crowned with ivy. 
Instant death was the penalty of refusal. 
Among other instances of cruel punishment 
at Jerusalem two women, with their infant 
children, whom they had circumcised with 
their own hands, were thrown from the 
battlements on the south side of the temple, 
into the deep vale below. Officers were sent 
into all the towns, attended by bands of 
soldiers, to enforce obedience to the royal 
edict. 

It seems that ultimately Antiochus came 
into Palestine to observe that his orders had 
been duly executed ; and the history relates 

* Dan. x. 



that he commanded and superintended the 
most horrible tortures of the recusants : — 
particular mention is made of the martyrdom 
of Eleazar, in his ninetieth year, for refus- 
ing to eat swine's flesh*; and of the heroic 
matron and her seven sons, who nobly set 
the royal madman at defiance, and professed 
their belief that " The King of the World 
would raise up to everlasting life those who 
! died for his laws;" and threatening their 
| tormentor that " he should have no resurrec- 
I tion to life, but receive the just punishment 
of his pride through the judgment of God." 
Never before were the Jews exposed to so 
furious a persecution; indeed it is the first 
time in which they can be said to have been 
persecuted on account of their religion. It 
was undoubtedly made instrumental in the 
then great mission of the Jews in calling 
the attention of the heathen to the great 
principles of doctrine of which they had 
been the special conservators. The mere 
fact of this conspicuous persecution for 
opinion, which was a new thing to the 
heathen, and still more the historical re- 
sults of this persecution, were calculated to 
draw the attention of every reflecting mind 
among the heathen to those religious pecu- 
liarities, on behalf of which such numbers of 
the Jewish people were willing to peril their 
lives. 

The persecution had lasted about six 
months, when God raised up a deliverer for 
a people whom he had not yet abandoned, 
in the noble family of the Asamoneans. 
Mattathias was the son of John, the son of 
Simon, the son of Asamoneus, from whom 
the family took its name. He was a priest 
of the course of Jehoiarib, the first of the 
twenty-four courses appointed by David f, 
descended from Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, 
the elder branch of the family of Aaron J. 
He had five sons, whose names were Joha- 
nan (John), Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and 
Jonathan. He was one of the principal 
inhabitants of Modin, a town near the sea- 
shore, about a mile from Joppa (J affa), and 
four miles from Lydda or Diospolis. To this 
city a royal officer named Apelles was sent 

* 2 Mace. vi. 18—31. 
■f 1 Chron. xxiv. 7- ±1 Mace. ii. 55. 



CHAP. III.] 



FROM 420 B.C. TO 163 B. 



433 



to enforce the edict. With many fair pro- 
mises, he endeavoured to induce Mattathias, 
as a leading man in the place, to set the 
example of sacrificing to the idol. But the 
undaunted priest repelled his offers with in- 
dignation and abhorrence, and with a loud 
voice, in the hearing of the whole assembly, 
proclaimed his refusal to sacrifice. At this 
juncture a certain Jew passed towards the 
altar with the intention of sacrificing, when 
Mattathias, in obedience to the law, struck 
him down with his own hand, as a rebel 
against Jehovah. This was the earnest- 
blood of the great war which followed. 
Kindled by his own act, the zealous priest 
and his sons, assisted by the citizens, whom 
their daring act emboldened, rushed upon 
the commissioner and his retinue, slew them 
on the spot, and tore down the idolatrous 
altar. Alive to the consequences of this 
deed, Mattathias proclaimed through the 
city, " Whosoever is zealous for the law, and 
a maintainer of the covenant, let him follow 
me!" Thus he and his sons fled to the 
mountains of Judea, They were only ten in 
number at first, but were soon joined by 
many Jews who were determined to main- 
tain the religion of their fathers. 

These conscientious persons were disposed 
to oonstrue the obligations of the law all the 
more rigidly and literally, out of opposition 
to the loose principles of those who had 
joined the Greeks— it being the tendency of 
all great struggles to produce extreme par- 
ties. They hence held it to be imperative 
to abstain from the use of arms on the Sab- 
bath day. In consequence of this a thousand 
persons, who had taken refuge in a large 
cave not far from Jerusalem, allowed them- 
selves to be slaughtered on that day without 
the least resistance. This event opened the 
eyes of Mattathias and his adherents ; who, 
after mature deliberation, determined that 
it was not only lawful, but their duty, to 
stand on their defence on the Sabbath day ; 
although they still thought themselves 
bound from voluntarily becoming on that 
day the assailants. They took every means 
of making this resolution known throughout 
the country, so that from that time no scru- 
ples on the subject were entertained. 



Meanwhile the party of Mattathias went 
on steadily increasing, until it amounted to 
a considerable body of men, who were pre- 
pared to hazard everything in defence of 
their religion. This ardour could not long 
be restrained, and Mattathias, emerging from 
his concealment, went with them throughout 
the J ewish cities, and everywhere demolished 
the idolatrous altars, circumcised the chil- 
dren, slew the apostate Jews and the officers 
appointed to execute the decree of Antiochus, 
recovered many of the copies of the law 
which the oppressors had taken away, and 
gained several important advantages over 
the enemy. While engaged in these expe- 
ditions the heroic priest died, in the year 
167 B.C. Before his death he appointed his 
third and bravest son, Judas, to be military 
leader; associating with him Simon, his 
second and most prudent son, as counsellor. 
Judas is supposed to have derived his cele- 
brated surname of Maccabeus from a cabalistic 
word formed of M. C. B. I., the initial letters 
of the Hebrew text Mi ChamoTca Baalim 
Jehovah, H Who is like unto thee among the 
gods, Jehovah!" (Exod. vi. 11), which 
letters might have been displayed on his 
sacred standard: like the S. P. Q. R. for 
Senatus populus que Romanus on the Roman 
ensigns. 

The noble war for the rights of opinion 
commenced by Mattathias was carried on for 
twenty-six years by his illustrious sons- 
counting from the first stroke at Modin — 
with five successive kings of Syria. Within 
this period Judas and his brothers established 
the independence of their country and the 
aggrandisement of their family, after destroy- 
ing above two hundred thousand of the best 
troops of the Syrian kings. " Such a triumph 
of a petty province over a great empire is 
hardly to be paralleled in the annals of 
history."* 

The first enterprise of Judas, and his 
comparatively small but resolute band, was 
against Apollonius, whose barbarous exploits 
at Jerusalem have lately been recorded. He 
was at the head of a large army, but was 
defeated and slain by Judas, who took his 

* flales, ii. 551. 



F F 



434 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[book T. 



sword, with which he afterwards fought all 
his life long. 

The next exploit of Judas was the defeat 
of Seron, a Syrian general, with a large host 
of Grsecising Jews and apostate Samaritans. 
The small force with which he achieved this 
victory was encouraged by the hero in the 
words of Jonathan, the son of Saul, " With 
the God of Heaven it is all one to deliver 
with a great multitude or a small company : " 
adding the emphatic words, " We fight for our 
lives and our laws.''' This battle was fought 
near Betheron. 

Antiochus was filled with rage and indig- 
nation at these successes of an adversary 
who seemed so contemptible, but whose 
fame had now spread into all the neighbour- 
ing nations. He formed large plans of ven- 
geance, but finding these checked by the 
exhausted state of his treasury — for he had 
squandered wealth like a madman, as he 
was — he resolved to proceed into the eastern 
provinces to recruit his finances. His son, 
the heir of his crown^then about seven years 
old, he committed to the care of Lysias, " a 
nobleman, and one of the blood-royal," and 
appointed him regent of all the western 
provinces, from the Euphrates to Egypt, and 
commissioned him to raise and march an 
army to extirpate the Jews, and to plant a 
foreign colony in their room, 166 B.C. 

The next year Lysias was able to send a 
large army of forty thousand foot and seven 
thousand horse into Judea, under the com- 
mand of Nicanor and Gorgias. So confident 
were they of victory that Nicanor proclaimed 
a sale of the captive Jews beforehand, at the 
rate of ninety for a talent, or about two 
pounds sterling a head. This drew a crowd 
of merchants from the coast to the Syrian 
camp at Emmaus, near Jerusalem, to make 
a cheap purchase of slaves. This was not a 
peculiar circumstance : for it was then usual 
(according to Polybius) for the march of 
armies to be attended by slave-dealers. 
Under these alarming circumstances Judas 
and his party assembled at Mizpeh— that 
ancient place of concourse — where they 
fasted and prayed; after which Judas, in 
obedience to the law, dismissed all such of 
his men as had in the course of the preceding 



year built houses, betrothed wives, or were 
planting vineyards, or were fearful ; and 
this strong act of faith reduced his small 
army from six thousand to three thousand 
men. 

The Syrian generals deemed it superfluous 
to employ their large force against so small 
a body. Gorgias, therefore, with a chosen 
army of five thousand foot and one thousand 
horse, marched by night to surprise the 
army of Judas. But that vigilant commander 
was apprised of the design, and determined 
to take advantage of the separation of the 
two generals. He marched therefore early 
in the evening, and fell by night upon the 
camp of Nicanor. Not the least expectation 
of an attack being entertained, the whole 
camp was thrown into confusion, and the 
soldiers fled. Three thousand Syrians were 
slain, and many soldiers and slave-dealers 
made prisoners. Early in the morning 
Gorgias, returning from his abortive march 
to Mizpeh, beheld the Syrian camp in flames, 
which threw his soldiers into such a panic 
that they betook themselves to instant flight ; 
but were pressed upon so vigorously by the 
conquering Jews, that in all they destroyed 
that day nine thousand of their enemies, and 
wounded many more. Nicanor escaped in 
the disguise of a slave to Antioch, declaring 
his conviction that a mighty God fought for 
the Jews. In the camp of the Syrians the 
latter found great quantities of gold and 
silver, including the money which the slave- 
dealers had brought to purchase their per- 
sons. This victory was celebrated by a feast 
of thanksgiving. 

On the news of this defeat, the regent 
Lysias assembled a larger army of sixty 
thousand choice infantry and five thousand 
horse, and marched himself at their head, to 
invade Judea in the south. He entered 
Idumea, which name must be understood as 
distinguishing the more modern territory of 
the Edomites, from their older and more 
southern territory of Edom, in Mount Seir, 
which the Nabathaeans now occupied. — 
Idumea was then confined to the region 
west and south-west of the Asphaltic Lake, 
which had in former times belonged to the 
tribes of Simeon and Judah. But after the 



CHAP. III.] 



435 



Captivity it had been occupied by Edomites 
from Arabia Petrsea, the ancient Edom, who 
made Hebron their capital, and rebuilt, on 
their northern frontier, the strong fortress of 
Bethsur, or Bethsura, which had been origi- 
nally built by Rehoboam*. At this last- 
named very advantageous post, Lysias en- 
camped, and was there set upon by the 
dauntless Judas, who, with only ten thou- 
sand men, gained a most important victory, 
slaying five thousand men on the spot, and 
putting the rest to flight. Observing that 
the Jews fought like men who were deter- 
mined to conquer or die, Lysias did not 
venture to renew the engagement, and in- 
deed his soldiers were so disheartened that 
he was soon obliged to return to Antioch, 
and there issue orders that recruits for a 
new expedition should be raised in distant 
countries, 165 B.C. 

This victory made Judas master of Judea ; 
and he determined to return to Jerusalem, 
to repair and beautify the temple, which 
was then deserted and dilapidated. In the 
neglected courts of the Lord's house shrubs 
were growing " as in the forest or on the 
mountain." The whole host cast ashes on 
their heads, and cried towards heaven, when 
they beheld the desolation of that holy 
place. The work of restoration was com- 
menced with ardour ; new utensils were 
provided for the sacred, services ; the old 
altar, having been defiled by idolatrous 
sacrifices, was taken away, and a new one 
erected in its place ; and the sacrifices were 
recommenced precisely three years after the 
temple had been dedicated to Jupiter Olym- 
pius. A feast of eight days celebrated this 
new dedication, and an annual festival was 
instituted in honour of the event. 

The castle on Mount Zion soon, however, 
proved a serious annoyance to the people, as 
it was still in the hands of the Syrians, who 
lost no opportunity of disturbing the services 
of the temple. The army of Judas was too 
small to allow him to blockade the castle, 
but he fortified the temple-mount against 
their aggressions with high walls and towers. 
He also strengthened the important fortress 
of Bethsura, to protect the frontier towards 
* 2 Chron. xi. 7. 

L - ■ : : 



Idumea, as it lay about midway between 
Jerusalem and Hebron. 

When Antiochus Epiphanes received in- 
telligence of the success of the Jewish arms 
and the defeat of the Syrian hosts, he was at 
Elymais in Persia, detained by an insurrec- 
tion occasioned by his plundering the cele- 
brated temple in which his father Antiochus 
the Great had lost his life. Transported 
with ungovernable passion at the news, he 
hastened his homeward march to Antioch, 
devoting the Jewish nation to utter destruc- 
tion. But, while his mouth uttered the deep 
curses and fell purposes of his heart, he was 
smitten with sore and remediless torments 
in his inner parts. Yet on he went, until he 
fell from his chariot, and suffered much from, 
the fall. He was then carried on a litter, 
but his disease acquired such a loathsome 
character that his person became an abhor- 
rence to himself and to all w r ho had occasion 
to be near him. In a disease so timed and 
so peculiar, the proud monarch was led to 
perceive the hand of God, and to acknow- 
ledge that his barbarities and sacrileges 
were justly punished by the torments which 
he endured and by the death which lay 
before him. He died early in the year 164 
b.c, and in him perished a man whose wild 
extravagances, dissolute and undignified 
character, savage cruelties, and capricious 
alternations of temper, abundantly justified 
the nickname of Epimanes ['madman'] by 
which in his latter years his assumed title 
of Epiphanes [' illustrious '] was ridiculed. 

Antiochus V., surnamed Eupator [' well- 
fathered'], then a child nine years of age, 
was set up for king by his guardian Lysias, 




[Antiochus (V.) Eupator.] 



and his succession received the important 
sanction of the Romans ; for although De- 



f f 2 



436 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



metrius (the son of Seleucus Philopator), 
still an hostage at Rome, and then twenty- 
three years of age, failed not to urge his 
claims upon the attention of the senate, that 
sage body decided that it was more for the 
interests of Rome that a minor should occupy 
the throne of Syria, than the ardent and 
able Demetrius. 

In the year 164 B.C. the war against the 
Maccabees was renewed by the regent Lysias. 
He invaded Judea with an army of eighty 
thousand foot, eighty elephants, and a large 
body of cavalry. He laid siege to Bethsura, 
but was repulsed by Judas, with the loss of 
eleven thousand foot, and one thousand six 
hundred horse, and his whole army was 
,broken up. This defeat convinced Lysias 
that the Jews could not be overcome, be- 
cause of the Almightiness of the God by 
whom they were helped. He therefore 
offered them peace, on the condition of their 
being loyal to the state ; on their acceptance 
of which, he issued a decree in the name of 
the king, which allowed them the free exer- 
cise of their own customs and worship, and 
permitted them to live according to their 
own laws. The apostate high-priest Mene- 
laus, who had been all this while with the 
Syrians, and had exerted himself in pro- 
moting this peace, was now sent back to the 
Jews to be reinstated in his pontificate. It 
is of some importance to note that the 
Roman ambassadors at the Syrian court 
used their efficient aid in obtaining this 
treaty for the Jews. 

The peace thus afforded was of no long 
continuance : for although, formally, the 
war with the kingdom had ceased, the 
governors of the Syrian provinces were not 
backward in giving the Jews all the molest- 
ation in their power, and in encouraging 
such of the neighbouring nations as were 
from old or new enmities disposed to disturb 
them — such as the Joppites, the Jamnites, 
the Arabians, and the Idumeans, all of 
whom were successively reduced by Judas, 
after a bloody warfare, the particulars of 
which are recorded in 2 Mace. x. 14 — 38; 
xi. 1— 38. 

AH this time the citadel on Mount Zion, 
garrisoned by Syrians and renegade Jews, 



continued to prove a great annoyance to the 
temple worship, which at last proved so in- 
tolerable, that Judas was induced to lay 
siege to it, after his return from the defeat 
of Gorgias the governor of Idumea. But 
some of the besieged, forcing their way 
through in a sally, hastened to the court at 
Antioch, and complained of the continued 
hostility of the Jews to the Syrian govern- 
ment, as evinced by this attempt upon the 
Syrian garrison; and, by dwelling on this 
and other matters, contrived to stir up 
Lysias to undertake a new war against 
them. The Syrian army which was raised 
for this war in 163 B.C. consisted of one 
hundred thousand foot, twenty thousand 
horse, thirty-two elephants, and three hun- 
dred chariots armed with scythes — a prodi- 
gious force in that age, when, on account of 
the extravagant wages which soldiers received, 
it was difficult to keep more than eighty 
thousand men in the field. The young king 
was present in the camp, but of course Lysias 
was the actual commander. The Jews did 
not venture to attack the royal army in the 
open field. But while the Syrians laid siege 
to Bethsura, Judas fell upon them in the 
night, slew four thousand of them before 
they well knew who was among them, and 
drew off safely by break of day. The day after, 
a battle took place, in which the Syrians 
lost six hundred men ; but Judas, fearing 
to be surrounded by the superior numbers of 
the enemy, thought proper to retire to Jeru- 
salem, the fortifications of which he now 
strengthened and put in a state of defence. 
In this battle Judas lost his brother Eleazer, 
That valiant man perceiving one of the 
elephants more splendidly caparisoned than 
the others, mistakenly supposed it to be that 
of the king, and fought his way to it, got 
under it, stabbed it in the belly, and was 
crushed to death by the fall of the huge 
beast upon him. 

It being a sabbatic year of rest to the 
land, Bethsura soon after surrendered for 
lack of provisions; and Jerusalem, which 
was next besieged, must have shared the 
same fate, and all the advantages which had 
been gained appeared now to be on the point 
of being lost for ever; when providentially 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



437 



the young king and his guardian were re- 
called hy a civil war at home, commenced 
by Philip, who had been appointed regent 
by Antiochus Epiphanes before his death, to 
the exclusion of Lysias, whose ill success in 
the former war with the Jews had been 
highly displeasing to him. When this intel- 
ligence reached the camp, the king and 
council hastily concluded a peace with the 
Jews on the former terms — that they should 
be allowed to live according to their own 
laws. The siege was then broken up, but 
the treaty was violated by the Syrians in 
the demolition of the strong walls of the 
mount on which the temple stood. The 
royal army was then marched against Philip, 
who had gotten possession of Antioch, the 
metropolis, but who was defeated and 
slain. 

Now at last the traitor and apostate 
Menelaus met the fate he had long deserved. 
At the approach of the Syrian army he had 
abandoned his countrymen, and had stimu- 
lated the operations against them by his 
advice and counsel, in the secret hope of 
being made governor of the province, if 
Judas and his party were destroyed. But 
the intended mischief recoiled on his own 
wicked head. On the conclusion of the 
peace, he was viewed by the king and regent 
as the author of all these unhappy wars, and 
was sentenced to be suffocated in the ash- 



tower at Berea*; while the office to which 
he aspired was given to Judas himself, who 
was appointed to be chief governor " from 
Ptolemais unto the Gerrhenians." 

In the room of Menelaus, Jachimus or 
Alcimus was nominated to the high-priest- 
hood, to the exclusion of the rightful claim- 
ant, Onias, the son of that Onias who had 
been slain at Antioch at the instigation of 
Menelaus. Upon this disappointment, Onias 
retired in disgust to Egypt, where his mili- 
tary and political talents procured him high 
favour from Ptolemy Philometor, and he was 
ultimately empowered to build a temple and 
establish a priesthood, for the numerous 
Jews of Egypt and Cyrene, at Heliopolis; 
and which subsisted nearly as long as that 
of Jerusalem, both being destroyed in the 
reign of Vespasian. There can be no ques- 
tion of the irregularity of this establishment ; 
and although Onias justified it to the Jews 
by reference to the text Isa. xix. 18, 19, the 
temple at Jerusalem was always held in 
much superior estimation by the J ews even 
of Egypt, who frequently repaired thither to 
worship. 

* This punishment was borrowed by the Syrian-Greeks 
from the Persians. A place was enclosed with high walls 
and filled with ashes. A piece of timber was made to pro- 
ject over the ashes, and on this the criminal was placed. 
He was liberally supplied with meat and drink, until over- 
come with sleep, he fell into the deceitful heap, and died 
an easy death. Only criminals of high rank were thus 
punished, it being considered a sort of privileged death. 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



With the promotion of Judas Maccabeus to 
be chief governor of Judea, the rule of the 
Asamonean dynasty may be conveniently 
taken to commence, and the period which 
that rule embraces may be suitably intro- 
duced in a new chapter. 

Alcimus, the new high-priest, did not long 
enjoy his dignity, for his profligacy, and his 
attempts to revive the heathenish rites, so 
offended the Jews, that they expelled him. 



We have already noticed the refusal of 
the Roman senate to support the claim of 
Demetrius to the crown of Syria, or to allow 
him to depart for that country. Subse- 
quently, acting by the advice of his friend 
Polybius, the historian, he made his escape 
from Rome, and landed with a few men, 
only eight friends and their servants, at 
Tripolis in Phoenicia. Here he had the art 
to make it believed that his wild enterprise 



438 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



was sanctioned by the Romans ; under which 
pei suasion he was joined by several of his 
adherents, with whom he advanced towards 
Antioch. Here the army declared for him, 
and secured the persons of Antiochus Eupa 
tor and Lysias, and in proof of their sincerity, 
brought them to Demetrius; but he said, 
" Let me not see their face ! " on which hint 
they were slain by the soldiers, 162 b.c. 

In the preceding year one of the Roman 
ambassadors at the court of A. Eupator had 
been slain, while enforcing the treaty with 



[book t. 




[Demetrius Soter.] 

Antiochus the Great, by destroying all the 
elephants, and all but twelve of the ships of 
war. Demetrius, anxious to have his claims 
recognised by Rome, sent the murderer 
thither, together with the present of a 
crown of gold. The present was accepted 
by the senate ; but they dismissed the mur- 
derer, resolving to take some future occasion 
of making the whole Syrian empire respon- 
sible for the act. 

When Demetrius was established on the 
throne of Syria, the apostate Jews, with 
Alcimus at their head, gathered around him, 
and filled his ears with reports and insinua- 
tions injurious to Judas and the party of 
which he was the leader. As people na- 
turally listen with pleasure to those who 
express conformity of views, it is not won- 
derful that these traitors gained the atten- 
tion of the king, who could as yet know but 
little of the real state of affairs in his 
kingdom. He re-appointed Alcimus as 
high-priest, and sent a considerable military 
force, under the command of Bacchides, 
governor of Mesopotamia, to reinstate him, 
and to take vengeance upon those whom he 
had represented as equally the enemies of 
himself and the king. As Bacchides ac- 



companied by the high-priest, entered the 
country with professions of peace, many 
Jews, relying thereon, put themselves in his 
power, and were treacherously slain. After 
this Bacchides reinstated Alcimus ; and in- 
trusting the province to his charge, and 
leaving a force that seemed sufficient to 
support him, he returned to the king. 
Judas, who had not appeared in the field 
against Bacchides, came forward after he 
withdrew ; and Alcimus, unable to offer any 
effectual resistance, again repaired with his 
complaints to the king. On this Demetrius, 
resolving on the utter destruction of the 
Maccabees, sent a large army into Judea, 
under the command of the same Mcanor 
whom Judas had defeated five years before. 
At first he endeavoured to entrap the Jewish 
chief with friendly professions, but finding 
Judas too wary to be thus caught, hostilities 
commenced, and in a battle fought at 
Capharsalama, Mcanor was defeated with 
the loss of fifty thousand men. He was 
then forced to seek refuge in the castle of 
Mount Zion, until the reinforcements, for 
which he sent, should arrive from Syria. 
These were promptly supplied, and then he 
hazarded another battle, in which he was 
himself slain, and his army cut in pieces 
160 b.c. 

Now Judas, having heard of the already 
extensive conquests of the Romans, and 
having become sensible of the great con- 
trolling power which they exercised in the 
affairs of western Asia and of Egypt, took 
the opportunity of the respite which this 
victory procured, to send an embassy to 
Rome, to solicit an alliance with that great 
people, and therewith protection from the 
Syrian government. It was part of the 
systematic plan of subjugation practised by 
that most politic body, the Roman senate, to 
grant liberty to those who were under 
foreign dominion, that they might detach 
them from their rulers, and afterwards 
enslave them when fit opportunity offered*. 
The J ewish ambassadors were therefore very 

* This is the drift of Justin's remark with reference to 
this very transaction : — " A Demetrio cum defecissent 
Judtei, amiciria Romanorum petita, primi omnium ex 
Orientalibus libertatem receperunt : facile tunc Romanis 
de alieno largientibus." Lib. xxxvi. cap. 3. 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN 



PRINCES. 



439 



graciously received; an offensive and de- j 
fensive alliance was readily concluded with j 
the Jews; and a letter was immediately 
after written to Demetrius, commanding 
him to desist from persecuting them, and 
threatening him with war if he persisted. 
But before the ambassadors returned, or this 
letter had been received, Judas had fallen in 
a furious conflict with Bacchides, whom 
(with Alcimus) the king had sent to avenge 
the defeat of Nicanor and his host. With 
only eight hundred men, the rest having 
deserted him, Judas charged the Syrians, 
defeated their right wing and pursued them 
to Azotus: but the left wing, being un- 
broken, pursued him closely in turn; and 
after a most obstinate engagement the 
greatest of the later Jewish heroes lay dead 
upon the field. This was not far from 
Modin, his native town ; and his brothers 
Simon and Jonathan, having concluded a 
truce, were enabled to deposit his remains in 
the family sepulchre at that place. 

The death of Judas restored the ascend- 
ancy to the apostate Jews, and was followed 
by a merciless persecution of his adherents. 
They were thus made strongly sensible of 
the want of a head, and therefore they 
elected Jonathan, the valiant younger 
brother of Judas, to be their chief and 
leader. He led them into the wilderness of 
Tekoah, and encamped at the cistern of 
x\spher. After some skirmishes with the 
Arabs in that quarter, Jonathan deemed it 
advisable to send the wives and children, 
and the most valuable property of his party, 
to the safe keeping of the friendly Na- 
bathaeans of Mount Seir, under a convoy 
commanded by his brother John. This 
party was attacked on the way and plun- 
dered by the Arabs, and John himself was 
killed. For this, Jonathan soon after took a 
severe revenge upon the bridal procession at 
the marriage of one of the princesses of this 
same tribe, which he attacked, and slew the 
greater part, and took their spoils. 

After this, Jonathan, the more effectually 
to secure himself from his enemies, with- 
drew into the marshes formed by the over- 
flowings of the Jordan, access to which was 
very difficult. Bacchides, however, made an 



attack on the Sabbath-day, upon the pass 
leading to the camp, and carried it by 
storm. The Jews defended themselves with 
great valour; but, being oppressed by num- 
bers, they leaped into the overflowing Jordan 
and swam to the other side, whither the 
enemy did not venture to pursue them. 

It was not without difficulty that Jona- 
than roused his adherents to the exertions 
which they made on this occasion. In fact 
there are several indications, at and before 
this time, that the people were becoming 
tired of this long struggle for their religion 
and liberties, and disposed to submit to cir- 
cumstances, for the sake of the quiet of 
which they had been so many years de- 
prived. Besides, by this time the original 
character of the war, as one of resistance 
against religious persecution, had somewhat 
changed. There was more of politics mixed 
in it ; and with that change, the ardour of 
the orthodox Jews appears to have abated. 
The Syrian government had also become 
much more mild since the time of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, and under favouring circum- 
stances, it might have been expected that 
the Jews would without difficulty have 
obtained what they sought. It was pro- 
bably the knowledge of this, as well as 
from the consciousness that the breach was 
not likely to be healed by continued war- 
fare, that latterly produced so great a reluc- 
tance to support the Maccabees, and so 
strong a disposition to submit to the Syrians. 
We may thus account not only for the cir- 
cumstance which occasions this remark, but 
for the readiness of some of the best sup- 
porters of the Maccabees to listen to the 
fair promises of the Syrian generals ; for the 
desertion of Judas, before his last action, by 
the great body of his adherents ; and for his 
comparative inaction on several recent occa- 
sions. To the operation of these circum- 
stances we are also disposed to refer the 
anxiety of Judas to conclude a treaty with 
the Romans. For this step he has been 
blamed by some persons, who appear to 
have inadequately considered the circum- 
stances. It is not clear to us that if Judas 
had been aware that the step he took was 
likely to lead to the future subjection of the 



440 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. 



country to the Romans, he would have been 
deterred from seeking their alliance. He 
did not fight for national independence, 
which was a moral impossibility, but for 
liberty of conscience. If that had been con- 
ceded by the Syrian kings, the Jews would 
readily have returned to their political sub- 
jection, and were indeed anxious to do so. 
If therefore J udas had known the ultimate 
contingency of subjection to the Romans 
instead of the Syrians, there was nothing in 
that to deter him, if he felt that the Romans 
were likely to be more tolerant of the reli- 
gious peculiarities of his nation. It is quite 
true that by the skilful use of circumstances 
which ultimately arose, the Jews were en- 
abled to establish a modified independence — 
which independence the Romans destroyed. 
But these circumstances were not foreseen in 
the time of J udas, and independence was not 
among the objects originally contemplated. 
It is only in forgetfulness of those facts that 
-any one can impute blame to Judas for the 
measure which he took — which measure, in- 
deed, we cannot trace to have had any grave 
effect upon ultimate results. Whether the 
J ews had offered themselves to the notice of 
the Romans at this time or not, they cer- 
tainly could not long have escaped the 
attention of that people, nor, unless events 
had taken an entirely different course to 
that which they actually took, could their 
subjection to the Roman yoke have been 
long postponed. 

From the Jordan, Bacchides returned to 
J erusalem, and was employed for some time 
in strengthening the fortresses of Judea, 
particularly the citadel at Jerusalem and 
the important fortresses of Gazara. The 
sons of some of the principal persons among 
the J ews he took and detained in the citadel 
as hostages for the good conduct of their 
friends, But in the same year Alcimus was 
seized with a kind of cramp, and died in 
much agony, while giving orders for the 
demolition of the wall which separated the 
court of the Gentiles from that of the 
Israelites, so as to give the former free 
access to the privileged part of the temple ; 
and Bacchides having nothing to detain him 
in Judea, after the death of the man on 



whose account the war was undertaken, 
withdrew from the country, and allowed the 
Jews two years of repose. To what extent 
this may have been due to the interposition 
of the Romans, we have no means of know- 
ing; but the results of the application to 
the senate must by this time have been 
known both at Antioch and in Judea. Pro- 
bably the death of Judas, before the return 
of his ambassadors, went far to neutralise 
the immediate effects which might have 
been expected from this treaty. 

This tranquillity was not favourable to 
the designs of the Graecising Jews, who laid 
a plot to surprise and seize Jonathan and 
his adherents, all in one night, throughout 
the land, and prevailed on Bacchides to 
return with the force under his command to 
give effect to their design (158 B.C.). A 
timely discovery of the plot enabled Jona- 
than to damp the ardour of the conspirators 
by putting to death fifty of the principal of 
them. Not, however, feeling himself in a 
condition to oppose Bacchides in the field, 
Jonathan, with his friends and his brother 
Simon, withdrew to the wilderness, where 
they so strongly repaired the dilapidated 
fortress of Bethbasi, that they were enabled 
to maintain a long siege against Bacchides, 
and at length to defeat him. This affair 
wonderfully enlightened the Syrian general, 
who now perceived that he had been but 
the tool of a faction ; and, in his resentment, 
he put to death several of the persons who 
had the most actively stimulated his enter- 
prise. At this juncture Jonathan sent to 
him a deputation with proposals of peace, 
and Bacchides readily acceded to the terms 
which were offered. The treaty being con- 
cluded and sworn to by both parties, an 
exchange of prisoners took place, and Bac- 
chides withdrew from the land, 156 B.C. 
Peace being thus happily restored, Jonathan 
fixed his residence at the strong post of 
Michmash, six miles north-by-east from 
Jerusalem, where he governed according to 
the laws of Moses, and to the extent of his 
power reformed the public abuses which had 
sprung up during the past troubles. 

About the year 154 B.C., Demetrius Soter 
retired to a new palace which he had built 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



CHAP. IV.] 

near Antioch, and there abandoned himse.i 
entirely to luxury and pleasure. All busi- 
ness and all care were refused admission, 
and consequently all the responsibilities and 
duties of his high office were utterly neg- 
lected. Hence arose great administrative 
abuses, and these led to discontents, and 
discontents to conspiracies, which were 
eagerly fostered by different neighbouring 
kings, especially by Ptolemy Philometor, 
king of Egypt*, from whom the island of 
Cyprus had been taken by Demetrius. They 
availed themselves of the services of Hera- 
clides, who had been banished by Demetrius, 
and who had since lived at Rhodes; and 
now, at the instigation of these kings, he 
persuaded a young man of obscure birth, 
named Balas, to announce himself as the 
son of Antiochus Epiphanes, and as such 
lay claim to the throne of Syria. As soon 
as he had been sufficiently tutored in the 
part he was to act, he publicly advanced his 
pretensions, which were acknowledged at 
once by Ptolemy Philometor, by Ariarathes, 
king of Cappadocia, and by Attalus, king of 
Pergamus (153 B.C.). He was then sent to 
Rome, together with a true daughter of 
Antiochus; and, although the senate soon 
detected the imposture, their old grudge 
against Demetrius, for having taken the 
throne of Syria without their consent, led 
them to recognise him, and empower him to 
raise forces for the recovery of a kingdom in 
which he could have had no just pretensions 
to supersede Demetrius (the son of the elder 
brother), even had his alleged birth been 
true. Balas now assumed the name of 
Alexander, and the title of king of Syria. 
He delayed not to levy troops, and sailed to 

* As the transactions in Egypt, since they were last no- 
ticed, have not, up to this point, been necessarily involved 
in the current of our history, we have not allowed them to 
engage our notice. It may however be briefly indicated in 
a note, that, after their junction against Antiochus Epi- 
phanes, quarrels arose between the two brother kings, Phi- 
lometor and Physcon, which the Romans endeavoured to 
adjust in 162 e,c. by arranging that Philometor should 
retain Egypt and Cyprus, and that Physcon should reign 
in Libya and Cyrene. But they soon again were at vari- 
ance respecting Cyprus, which Physcon wanted, but which 
Philometor resolved to retain according to the terms of the 
agreement. Meanwhile, as often happens in such cases, a 
third party (Demetrius) stepped in, and appropriated to 
himself the disputed island. Hence the enmity of Philo- 
metor to the king of Syria. 




[Alexander Balas.] 

Ptolemais (previously Accho), now Acre, in 
Palestine, where he was joined by numbers 
who had become disaffected to Demetrius. 
That infatuated person was now fairly 
roused from his lethargy, and came forth 
from his disgraceful retreat — but it was too 
late. 

This conjuncture of affairs was highly 
favourable to the interests of the Jews, as, 
from the high military character they had 
now acquired, the rivals vied with each 
other in the honours and immunities which 
they offered for the assistance of Jonathan 
and the Jews. First, Demetrius sent a 
letter appointing Jonathan his general in 
Judea, empowering him to levy forces, and 
promising to release the hostages. When 
the contents of this letter were made known, 
the hostages were restored by the garrison 
of the citadel, and the fortresses throughout 
the country were given up to him by the 
Syrian garrisons which Bacchides had left 
in them. The citadel and Bethsura, indeed, 
still held out, as they were garrisoned by 
apostate Jews, who had no other resource. 
Jonathan now removed from Michmash and 
fixed his residence at Jerusalem, which he 
occupied himself in repairing, and in re- 
building those walls of the temple-mount 
which Antiochus Eupator had cast down. 

On the other hand, Balas, acting probably 
by the advice of Ptolemy Philometor (who 
was well acquainted with the affairs and 
interests of the Jews), sent also a letter to 
Jonathan, in the very commencement of 
which he styled him " Brother," gave him 
the title and rank of " Friend of the King," 
appointed him to the high-priesthood, and 
sent him a purple robe and diadem, thereby 
creating him Ethnarch, or Prince of Judea. 
It was in the seventh month of this same 



442 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



year (153 B.C.) that Jonathan put on the 
holy robe of the high-priest, after that high 
office had been vacant for seven years. 

Demetrius did not yet despair of out- 
bidding Balas in this struggle to gain the 
favour and assistance of Jonathan. The 
list of the exemptions, immunities, and 
privileges which he offered is exceedingly 
curious, as showing the extent and minute 
ramifications of the previous exactions of 
the Syrian government ; and we have there- 
fore introduced it entire in a note below*. 

* " King Demetrius unto the people of the Jews sendeth 
greeting. Whereas ye have kept covenant with us, and 
continued in our friendship, not joining yourselves with 
our enemies, we have heard thereof, and are glad. Where- 
fore now continue ye still to be faithful unto us, and we 
will well recompense you for the things ye do in our behalf, 
and will grant you many immunities, and give you rewards. 
And now do I free you, and for your sake I release all the 
Jews from tributes, and from the customs of salt, and 
from crown taxes. And from that which aopertaineth 
unto me to receive for the third part of the seed, and the 
half of the fruit-trees, I release it from this day forth, so 
that they shall not be taken of the land of Judea, nor of 
the three governments which are added thereunto out of 
the country of Samaria and Galilee, from this day forth 
for evermore. Let Jerusalem also be holy and free, with 
the borders thereof, both from tents and tributes. And as 
for the tower which is at Jerusalem, I yield up my autho- 
rity over it, and give it to the high-priest, that he may set 
in it such men as he shall choose to keep it. Moreover, I 
freely set at liberty every one of the Jews that were car- 
ried captives out of the land of Judea into any pait of my 
kingdom, and I will that all my officers remit the tributes 
even of their cattle. Furthermore, I will that all the 
feasts, and sabbaths, and new moons, and solemn days, 
and the three days before the feast, and the three days after 
the feast, shall be all days of immunity and freedom for 
all the Jews of my realm. Also no man shall have autho- 
rity to meddle with them, or to molest any of them in any 
matter. I will further, that there be enrolled among the 
king's forces about thirty thousand men of the Jews, unto 
whom pay shall be given, as belongeth to all the king's forces. 
And of them shall be placed in the king's strongholds, of 
whom also some shall be set over the affairs of the king- I 
dom, which are of trust; and I will that their overseers 
and governors be of themselves, and that they live after 
their own laws, even as the king hath commanded in the 
land of Judea. And concerning the three governments I 
that are added to Judea from the country of Samaria, let 
them be joined with Judea, that they may be reckoned to 
be under one, nor bound to obey other authority than the ! 
high-priest's. As for Ptolemais, and the land pertaining I 
thereto, I give it as a free gift to the sanctuary. More- j 
over, I give every year fifteen thousand shekels" of silver 
out of the king's accounts to the places appertaining. And I 
all the overplus, which the officers payed not in as in I 
former time, from henceforth shall be given toward the 1 
use of the temple. And beside this, the five thousand j 
shekels of silver, which they took from the uses of the | 
temple out of the accounts year by year, even those things | 
shall be released, because they appertain to the priests that : 
minister. And whosoever they be that flee uuto the temple 
at Jerusalem, or he within the liberties thereof being in- j 



The extravagant generosity of these offers 
made Jonathan and the patriots suspicious 
of their sincerity, and, mindful of the past 
sufferings they had experienced through 
Demetrius, they agreed to espouse the cause 
of Alexander. 

Next year (152 b.c.) both the kings took 
the field with their armies, and Demetrius, 
who, when sober, wanted neither courage 
nor conduct, defeated his rival in the first 
battle ; but A. Balas being reinforced by the 
kings who had put him forward, was more 
successful in a great battle fought the year 
after, in which Demetrius himself was slain. 

The successful impostor now mounted the 
throne of Syria, and married Cleopatra, a 
I daughter of his great friend P. Philometor 
of Egypt, who himself conducted the bride 
to Ptolemais in Palestine, where the nuptials 
were celebrated with great magnificence 
(150 b.c). Jonathan was present on this 
occasion, and, mindful of the services he 
had rendered during the war, both Ptolemy 
and Alexander treated him with distin- 
guished honours. He was again presented 
with a purple robe, and appointed com- 
j mander or Meridarch of Judea. 

Alexander Balas, who had manifested 
considerable ability during this contest, 
was no sooner firmly settled on the throne, 
than he lapsed into the same errors which 
had been fatal to his predecessor. He 
abandoned the cares of government to his 
favourite Ammonius, that he might enjoy 
a luxurious life undisturbed. This minister 
put to death all the members of the royal 
family he could get into his power. But 
there still lived in Cnidus two sons of De- 
metrius, the elder of whom, Demetrius II., 
surnamed Nicator, landed at Cilicia in 148 
b.c, and soon collected a great army with 
which to assert his right to the crown. He 
also gained over to his interest Apollonius 
the governor of Ccele-Syria, whose first proof 
of attachment to his new master was to 

debted unto the king, or for any other matter, let them be 
at liberty, and all that they have in my realm. For the 
building also and the repairing of the works of the sanc- 
tuary, expenses shall be given out of the king's account. 
Yea, and for the building of the walls of Jerusalem, and 
the fortifying thereof round about, expenses shall be given 
out of the king's account, as also for the building of the 
walls of Judea." 



CHAP. IV.] 




[Demetrius Xicator.] 



invade Judea, which still adhered to the 
cause of Alexander. Jonathan came down 
from the mountains into the plain of the 
coast, and after taking Joppa before his 
eyes, defeated Apollonius with terrible loss. 
Ashdod he then subdued, and Ascalon 
opened wide her gates to receive the con- 
queror. For this essential service he re- 
ceived from Alexander a golden clasp or 
buckle, such as only members of the royal 
family might wear ; and the town and terri- 
tory of Ekron, near the coast, was also 
bestowed upon him. The king himself 
remained shut up in Antioch, awaiting the 
succours which he expected from his father- 
in-law of Egypt. Philometor came indeed ; 
but having discovered a plot formed against 
his life by the favourite Ammonius, and the 
infatuated Balas refusing to deliver up that 
guilty minister, Ptolemy testified his resent- 
ment by taking away his daughter, and 
bestowing her on Demetrius, whose cause he 
thenceforth espoused. This decided the 
contest. Ammonius was slain by the citizens, 
and A. Balas only avoided a similar fate by 
flight. The character which Ptolemy Philo- 
metor bore among the Syrians for justice 
and clemency was so high, that they pressed 
him to accept the vacant crown. But this 

'• he prudently declined, and recommended 
the rightful heir to their choice. The next 
year Alexander appeared again, in a con- 
dition to make one more struggle for the 
crown. He was defeated, and fled into 
Arabia, where an emir with whom he sought 

I shelter, rendered his name, Zabdiel, in- 
famous by the murder of his guest, whose 

; head he sent to the king of Egypt. That 
monarch himself died the same year (146 
B.C.). He left one son, a child, who was put 



443 

to death by Physcon, who now reigned sole 
king of Egypt. 

In Judea, Jonathan now employed himself 
in besieging the citadel of Jerusalem, which 
still remained in the hands of the apostate 
Jews and the Syrians, and which had so 
long proved a serious annoyance to the 
inhabitants of the city. Complaint of this 
operation having reached Demetrius, he 
cited Jonathan to Ptolemais to answer for 
his conduct. He went ; but left orders that 
the siege should be vigorously prosecuted in 
his absence. He took with him valuable 
presents for the king, by which and other 
means he so won his favour, that he not 
only confirmed him in the high-priesthood 
and all his other honours,, and also ratified 
the offers of his father, which Jonathan had 
once declined for the friendship of Balas. 
As the citadel still held out, J onathan urged 
the king to withdraw the garrisons from it 
and from Bethsura; which Demetrius pro- 
mised to do, provided the Jews would send 
a reinforcement to put down a dangerous 
disturbance which had broken out at An- 
tioch; for the new king had already ma- 
naged, by his gross misconduct and cruelty, 
to alienate the affections of both his Syrian 
subjects and Egyptian allies. The Jews 
rendered the required service. But when 
Demetrius deemed himself secure, and with- 
out further need of them, he behaved with 
great ingratitude. He demanded all the 
taxes, tolls, and tributes which he had pro- 
mised to remit, and thus succeeded in 
alienating the Jews as much as his other 
subjects. 

Alexander Balas left a son called Anti- 
ochus, whom the Arabian emir Zabdiel had 
retained in his hands when he slew the 
father; and he was persuaded by Tryphon 
(the former governor of Antioch under A. 
Balas) to send the young prince with him to 
lay claim to the throne of Syria. Antiochus 
was joyfully received by the malcontents, 
and by the numerous soldiers whom the 
false economy of Demetrius had disbanded. 
In a pitched battle, Demetrius was defeated, 
his elephants were taken, and Antioch was 
lost, 144 B.C. 

As soon as Antiochus VI., surnamed 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



444 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



Theos, had been crowned, his guardian 
Tryphon (for Antiochus was but a child) 
wrote in his name to invite the adhesion of 
Jonathan ; and offered in return to observe 
faithfully all the promises which Demetrius 
bad broken, and to appoint his brother 
Simon the royal governor for the district 
extending from the mountains between Tyre 
and Ptolemais to the borders of Egypt. 
These conditions were accepted by Jonathan, 
who, with the assistance of the Syrian forces, 
expelled the hostile garrisons from Gaza, 
Bethsura, and Joppa; but the citadel of 
Jerusalem still held out for Demetrius. 

With due regard to the past and the 
future, Jonathan deemed it advisable at this 
time to seek a renewal of the alliance with 
the Romans. The ambassadors were re- 
ceived at Rome with favour, and dismissed 
with assurances of friendship. On their 
return they (as the ambassadors of Judas 
had formerly done) visited the Spartans, 
and concluded a league with them, under 
some notion which the Jews entertained 
that the Spartans were of the stock of 
Abraham. 

Tryphon had contemplated the advance- 
ment of the son of Alexander Balas, merely 
as a means of intruding himself into the 
throne of Syria. Things were now, in his 
judgment, ripe for the removal of the young 
king, and for his own intrusion, when he 
found that Jonathan was likely to prove an 
obstacle to the execution of his design. He 
therefore invaded Palestine, and had ad- 
vanced as far as Bethshan, when, being 
intimidated by the appearance of Jonathan 
with forty thousand men, he pretended that 
his mission was entirely of a friendly nature 
—and that he had entered the country to 
put him in possession of Ptolemais. He 
played this part so naturally that the 
Jewish hero was deceived, and dismissed 
his army, saving three thousand men, two 
thousand of whom he left in Galilee, and 
advanced with the other thousand to take 
possession of Ptolemais. He had no sooner 
entered that city than the gates were shut, 
his men cut in pieces, and himself laden 
with chains. Not long after he was put to 
death by the perfidious Tryphon, who next 



slew his young master and set on his owd 
brows the Syrian crown. 

The Jews, whose prospects had lately been 
so fair, were filled with consternation when 
they heard of the captivity and subsequent 
murder of Jonathan. But Simon, the bro- 
ther of Jonathan, who had already been 
enabled to prove himself a true Maccabee, 
called them together in the temple, encou- 
raged them to make a vigorous defence, and 
offered to become their high-priest and leader 
in the room of his brother. He said: — 
" Since all my brethren are slain for Israel's 
sake, and I alone am left, far be it from me 
to spare my own life in any time of trouble." 
The offer was gladly accepted by the people, 
and he was unanimously elected to succeed 
J onathan : and, seeing he had sons of high 
promise, it was decided that the honours to 
which Simon was called should be inherited 
by his descendants. The form of expression 
is however remarkable, as showing that some 
doubts were entertained as to the strict 
legality of this procedure. It is said, " The 
Jews and the priests were well pleased that 
Simon should be their governor and priest 
[he and his sons] for ever, until there should 
arise a faithful prophet to show them what they 
should do." 

We are free to express our own opinion 
that the three brothers, Judas, Jonathan, 
and Simon, were men of great ability and 
unquestionable courage ; and we believe they 
sincerely desired the welfare of their country 
and to preserve the purity of religious wor- 
ship, to promote which objects they would at 
any time have shed their last blood. But 
we also think that Judas is the only one of 
the brothers of whose high moral principle 
or disinterestedness much can be said. From 
the time that Jonathan accepted the high- 
priesthood and various personal honours from 
Alexander Balas, it is easy to detect in most 
of the alternations of policy a leaning to that 
course which included the aggrandisement 
of the family and the promotion of its chiefs. ! 
We do not say or think that they would 
knowingly have sacrificed any public object 1 
to their own aggrandisement. But the dis- 
position to seek or prefer that particular 
good to our country which comprehends | 



!HAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



445 



honour or power to ourselves, belongs to a 
lower class of minds and principles than that 
wkich refuses wealth or power in connection 
with any public service, lest the motive of 
that service might be suspected. It must 
also be said, that the disposition of the later 
Maccabees to play fast and loose between 
the competitors for the Syrian crown, and 
equally to accept the favours which rival 
kings offered, when it was impossible to per- 
form equally to both the conditions which 
were expected in return, is not entitled to 
much praise. 

Had Jonathan and Simon been perfectly 
disinterested men, the obvious duty imposed 
upon them by the Law would have been to 
direct the attention of the Jews and of the 
Syrian king to Onias, then in Egypt, as the 
rightful high-priest, of the elder branch of 
the family of Aaron, who was unsuspected of 
any idolatrous taint, and whose abilities 
were of no common order : and the promises 
of the continuance of the sceptre of Judah 
to the house of David should have induced 
Simon, at least, when affairs were taking a 
turn favourable to the independence of the 
nation, to direct the hopes of Israel towards 
some able member of that illustrious house. 
But it is time to return to follow the course 
of our narrative. 

Simon removed the corpse of his illustrious 
I brother from Boscama in Gilead, where he 




fSepulchre at Modin.— Coin of Simon.] 



was slain, to the family sepulchre at Modin, 
■ : where he subsequently erected a noble mau- 
■, soleum, which was still standing in the time 
of Eusebius and Jerome, and in which Simon 
i must have taken some pride, as it is repre- 
I sented on his coins. 

At the first opportunity, Simon sent an 
embassy to Rome and Lacedemon to an- 
nounce to the senate the death of his brother, 



and his own succession to his dignities, and 
to seek a renewal of the alliance. Both 
nations received the ambassadors with ho- 
nour, expressed the usual regret, and the 
usual congratulations, and readily renewed 
the treaty, with the terms of which graven 
on brass "the deputation returned. 

The first care of Simon was to put the 
country in a state of defence, by repairing 
the fortresses and furnishing them with pro- 
visions. As the conflict between Tryphon 
and Demetrius still continued, and it was 
the unhappiness of the Jews that their posi- 
tion did not allow them to remain neutral, 
there were many sufficient causes to induce 
them to prefer the side of Demetrius, not- 
withstanding the ill-treatment they had 
formerly received from him. This personage, 
although nearly the whole of Syria was lost 
to him, remained in luxurious repose at 
Laodicea, whither Simon sent ambassadors 
to him, with a crown of gold, to treat about 
the renewal of the former terms of accom- 
modation. To this Demetrius in his fallen 
estate most gladly agreed, confirming so- 
lemnly all the immunities and privileges 
specified in his father's letter to Jonathan, 
with an act of amnesty for all past offences. 
These privileges were so great, that they 
may be said to have raised the nation to a 
station of independence. The Jews them- 
selves certainly considered that they were 
by this act delivered from the Syrian yoke ; 
and therefore this first year of Simon's reign 
(143 B.C.) as high-priest and ethnarch, or, in 
short, as Prince of the Jews, they signalised 
by making it an epoch from which to com- 
pute their times. This era is used on the 
coins of Simon, as well as by Josephus and 
the author of the first book of Maccabees. 

The next care of Simon was to reduce the 
strong fortresses that still held out. Gaza 
he took, and expelled the idolatrous inhabit- 
ants; and the citadel of Jerusalem, which 
had so long been a thorn in the sides of the 
Maccabees, was compelled by the famine, 
which a rigorous blockade produced, to sur- 
render in 142 B.C. Aware of the valour of 
his son John, Simon made him captain- 
general of his forces, and sent him to reside 
in Gazara on the sea-coast; while he made 



446 



the temple-mount at Jerusalem his own resi- 
dence. This he strongly fortified ; and his 
palace probably stood on the site which the 
castle of Antonia afterwards occupied. 

Having thus gained complete possession 
of the country, and the rights and liberties 
of the nation being established, a great 
council of the nation was held at Jerusalem, 
which testified its gratitude by confirming 
to Simon all his honours, and, in more dis- 
tinct terms than before, entailed them on 
his descendants. This decree of the assembly 
was graven on brass, and fixed to a monu- 
ment which was erected in the temple-court. 

Anxious to have the independence con- 
ceded by Demetrius recognised by the 
Romans, another embassy was sent to the 
senate, with a present of a shield of gold 
weighing one thousand minge, equal at the 
lowest computation to fifty thousand pounds 
sterling. The deputation was well received, 
and the present graciously accepted. Their 
suit was granted, and missions were sent by 
the senate to the kings of Egypt, Pergamus, 
Cappadocia, Syria (Demetrius), and Parthia, 
and to all the cities and states of Greece, Asia 
Minor, and of the isles in alliance with the 
Romans, to engage them to treat the Jews 
as their friends and allies, 141 b.c. 

In the same year Demetrius, whose cause 
appeared to be lost in the west, was invited 
to the east by large promises of support in 
any attempt he might make to bring back 
the Parthians to their allegiance. He was 
at first successful, but was in the end sur- 
prised and made prisoner by the Parthians. 
In this war he was assisted by a body of 
J ews under the command of John the son of 
Simon, whose exploits in Hyrcania procured 
him the honorary surname of Hyrcanus. As 
for Demetrius, he was well treated by the 
Parthian king, Arsaces V., otherwise called 
Mithridates ; who indeed first took care to 
exhibit him in different parts of his empire, 
but afterwards sent him into Hyrcania, 
where he treated him with the respect due 
to his rank, and even gave him his daughter 
Rhodoguna in marriage. Meanwhile his 
cause in Syria was maintained against 
Tryphon by his wife Cleopatra, who had shut 
herself up, with her children, in Seleucia on 



[book V 




[Antioehus VII., Sidetes.J 



the Orontes ; and a powerful force composed 
of persons discontented with the government 
of Tryphon, was gathering around her, when 
she heard that her captive husband had 
married Rhodoguna. This offended her 
pride, and was also calculated to weaken her 
party. Therefore, from both policy and 
revenge, she sent to Antiochus, the brother 
of Demetrius, who was then at Rhodes, and 
made him the offer of her hand and of the 
kingdom. Antiochus VII., who, from his 
passion for hunting, received the surname of 
Sidetes (' the hunter'), eagerly accepted the 
proposal, and delayed not to assume the title 
of king of Syria, although as yet unable to 
proceed to the continent, 141 b.c. 

The next year (140 b.c.) Antiochus wrote 
" from the isles of the sea," being still at 
Rhodes, " to Simon the high-priest and 
ethnarch, and to the people of the Jews," 
announcing his intention of coming speedily 
to recover the dominions of his father from 
the usurper Tryphon; and, to secure their 
assistance, confirming all the privileges 
granted by former kings, together with the 
royal privilege of coining money, which 
seems the only one which former kings had 
withheld, or which seemed wanting to com- 
plete the sort of secondary independence 
which they had by this time acquired. 

The year after (139 b.c) Antiochus landed 
in Syria to attack Tryphon, with whose 
tyrannies the people and even the soldiers 
had become completely weary. On the 
appearance of Sidetes he was deserted by 
most of his forces, and he therefore fled to 
Dora (south of Carmel) on the coast of ! 
Palestine. Antiochus pursued and besieged I 
him there ; but he fled by ship to Orthosia, \ 
a maritime town of Phoenicia; and, again, j 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PKINCE3. 



from thence to Apamea, where he was taken 
and put to death. 

Finding with how much more facility 
than he had been prepared to expect, the 
kingdom fell to him, Antiochus, very soon 
after his landing, formed the intention of 
reducing to their former complete subjection 
to the Syrian crown, the provinces and cities 
which had availed themselves of the troubled 
reigns of his predecessors to acquire such 
| independence as the Jews had established. 
This was an intention which any king in 
those times was Hkely to have formed with 
reference to privileges so recent, and so 
much extorted by temporary emergencies, 
and by which the power and dignity of the 
crown was so seriously impaired. Antiochus 
probably considered his own acts more bind- 
ing than the treaties obtained from the 
usurper Balas, or from the distressed Deme- 
trius ; yet even his own letter, written in the 
expectation of needing the aid which the 
event proved that he did not require, was 
not likely to be considered by him any 
strong bar to the execution of his design. 

His intentions were indicated on his first 
arrival in Palestine, to besiege Tryphon in 
Dora. Simon then sent two thousand men 
to assist him in the siege, with a good supply 
of warlike stores and engines, but the king 
declined to receive them, and sent over to 
J erusalem one of his generals, named Athe- 
■ nobius, with a requisition for the surrender 
of J oppa, Gazara, and the citadel of Jerusa- 
lem, which belonged to the Syrian crown, or 
else to pay five hundred talents for each of 
the former, and five hundred more for the 
arrears of tribute from those cities beyond 
the limits of Judea of which the Jews had 
gained possession, and on account of ravages 
which they had committed in his dominions. 
This demand was skilfully framed to steer 
clear of any points comprehended in the 
treaties or in the letter of Antiochus himself, 
and the demand seems upon the whole as 
moderate as could be framed consistently 
with the intention of retaining some hold 
upon the country. Writers call the answer 
of Simon "wise." It appears to us rather 
feeble. He denied that the Jews held any 
possessions but what belonged to their fathers, 



and which they had found opportunity to re- 
cover. With regard to the fortified towns of 
Joppa and Gazara, he called attention to the 
injuries which the people had been conti- 
nually receiving from those places, as justi- 
fying the measures he had taken; but he 
was willing to give the king one hundred 
talents for the right of possession. Atheno- 
bius returned with this answer to the king, 
to whom also he gave a very flaming account 
of the state and splendour in which Simon 
lived, and of the large quantities of gold and 
silver plate which appeared in his house and 
at his table. At this the king was so moved, 
that he sent an army under Cendebeus to 
invade J udea : but he was met and defeated 
by J ohn Hyrcanus and Judas, the two sons 
of Simon ; and the Syrians were expelled the 
country. 

The peace purchased by this victory was 
not of long duration. Simon availed himself 
of it to make a tour of inspection through 
the country, in the course of which he ar- 
rived at J ericho, where he took up his abode 
in the castle of his son-in-law Ptolemy, who 
was governor there. This Ptolemy, desiring 
to secure the government to himself, caused 
the old man and his two sons, Mattathias 
and Judas, to be treacherously murdered at 
an entertainment. He also sent a party to 
destroy John Hyrcanus at Gazara; but 
John had timely warning and fled to Jeru- 
salem, where he was readily recognised by 
the people as the successor of his father in 
the high-priesthood, and in the principality 
of Judea, Then Ptolemy, against whom the 
people of J erusalem shut their gates, fled to 
a fortress near Jericho, and- from thence to 
Zeno, the prince of Philadelphia (Rabbath- 
Ammon), probably to await there the arrival 
of Antiochus, to whom he had sent desiring 
the assistance of an army to reduce Judea 
again to the Syrian yoke. But his name 
occurs in history no more; whence it is 
probable that although Antiochus may have 
liked the crime he hated the criminal, and 
would afford him no countenance. However, 
the king marched a large army into Judea 
in 135 b.c, and, having ravaged the country, 
advanced to besiege Hyrcanus in Jerusalem, 
which was soon reduced to great extremities 



443 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. 



for want of provisions, which, had been scarce 
that year. On the approach of the Feast of 
Tabernacles in autumn, Hyrcanus besought 
a week's truce for the celebration of the 
feast; and this was not only granted by 
Antiochus, but he furnished the victims 
required for sacrifice, which could not be 
procured within the city. Finally, he con- 
cluded a peace with the Jews, when it was 
in his power to extirpate them from the 
country, and he was exhorted by many to 
do so, but generously refused. He was con- 
tent to dismantle Jerusalem, and to bind 
them to pay tribute (not for their proper 
country, but) for Joppa and other towns be- 
yond the limits of Judea, which they had 
either taken by arms or held by the grants 
of his predecessors. 

Four years after (131 B.C.) Antiochus 
Sidetes marched with a great army against 
the Parthians, under the pretence of deliver- 
ing his brother Demetrius. Hyrcanus ac- 
companied him in this expedition, and left 
him victorious in three battles over the 
Parthian king Phraates, which put A. Sidetes 
in possession of Babylonia, Media, and the 
other revolted provinces, and confined the 
Parthians within the original limits of their 
own kingdom. But while the Syrian army 
was dispersed in winter quarters, the Par- 
thians, assisted by the natives, conspired 
against them, and slew them all in one 
day ; Antiochus himself perished in the 
massacre, and scarcely a man remained 
to bear back to Syria the report of the 
catastrophe. 

Upon this Phraates sent to re-take Deme- 
trius, whom, after having been vanquished in 
the former campaign, he had liberated, and 
sent back to Syria, to create such a diversion 
there as might induce Antiochus to relin- 
quish his enterprise. But Demetrius made 
such speed that he escaped the pursuit, and 
on his re-appearance in Syria, coupled with 
the news of the death of his brother, he was 
enabled to recover his throne without much 
difficulty. 

Hyrcanus neglected not to avail himself 
of the confusion into which the Syrian em- 
pire fell, and the loss of strength which it 
sustained after the downfall of A. Sidetes. 



He got possession of several towns on the 
sea-coas£, and beyond Jordan, and annexed 
them to his territories. He also rendered 
himself more completely independent; for 
after this neither he nor his descendants 
paid any more tribute, service, or homage to 
the kings of Syria. Next Hyrcanus invaded 
Samaria. He took Shechem, the chief seat 
of the Samaritans, and demolished the 
temple which they had built on mount 
Gerizim. However, they continued to have 
an altar on the spot, on which they have 
offered sacrifices, according to the Levitical 
law, even to the present time. After this, 
Hyrcanus invaded and subdued theldumeans, 
to whom he offered the alternative of either 
relinquishing their idolatries and embracing 
the Jewish religion, or else of leaving the 
country into which they had intruded, and 
seeking a settlement elsewhere. They pre- 
ferred the former alternative, and, as prose- 
lytes, gradually became so incorporated with 
the Jews as to be counted one people with 
them; and at length the name itself was 
lost, or absorbed in that of the J ews. 

The course of events now again ealls our 
attention to Egypt. That country was still 
ruled by Ptolemy Physcon, whose gross and 
beast-like person bore the very impress of 
that cruel and voluptuous character which 
belonged to him. We gladly hurry over the 
revolting theme, which his character and 
conduct offer, merely to mention that Cleo- 
patra, the sister of the late Philometor and 
himself, became the wife of the former, by 
whom he had a son, and two daughters, both 
of the name of Cleopatra. After the death 
of Philometor, his young son was slain by 
Physcon, who also married the widow, his 
own sister. Of the two daughters, one was 
that Cleopatra who was married to Alexander 
Balas, king of Syria, then to Demetrius 
ISTicator, then to Antiochus Sidetes, and after 
the return of Demetrius became his wife 
again. Her sister, the other Cleopatra, was 
defiled by her uncle Physcon, who afterward? 
repudiated his wife (her mother and his owr. 
sister), and married this young princess 
His oppressions and cruelties towards his 
subjects were so severe, that at last they, 
could bear them no longer, but rose agains: 



CHAP. IT.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



449 



him, and compelled him to flee to Cyprus. 
The people then entrusted the government 
to his sister and divorced wife, the elder 
Cleopatra. Her son by him was with his 
father at Cyprus, and Physcon, fearing that 
the son's name might be used to strengthen 
Cleopatra on the throne, slew him, and sent 
his head, feet, and hands to her, directing 
that they should be given her in the midst 
of an entertainment. In the war which 
followed, Physcon was victorious, and Cleo- 
patra in her despair sent to Demetrius of 
Syria, the husband of her eldest daughter, 
offering him the crown of Egypt if he would 
come with an army to her aid. Allured by 
the splendid bribe, Demetrius immediately 
marched an army through Palestine into 
Egypt. But while he was engaged in the 
siege of Pelusium, Antioch and several other 
of his own cities revolted, from him, and he 
was obliged to abandon the prospect before 
him and return the way he came. Cleopatra 
then fled to seek protection with her daugh- 
ter t ie queen of Syria, who then resided at 
Ptolemais in Palestine. Physcon then re- 
gained possession of his throne, which he 
retained until his death in 117 B.C. 

The passage and return of the Syrians 
through Palestine could not but be attended 
with much annoyance to the Jews, and it 
may be proper to regard it as in some mea- 
sure the cause of the embassy which Hyrca- 
nus sent to Rome the same year (128 B.C.), 
to solicit the renewal of the treaties into 
which the senate had entered with his pre- 
decessors, and to complain of the small 
attention which Antiochus and Demetrius 
had paid to its former mandates. The am- 
bassadors were received with the usual fa- 
vour by the senate, which readily consented 
to renew the treaty which had been con- 
cluded with Simon, and which moreover 
took upon itself to abrogate the disadvanta- 
geous treaty which the Jews had been com- 
pelled to make with A. Sidetes. It also 
decreed that Hyrcanus should hold the 
towns of Joppa, Gazara, and others beyond 
the limits of Judea, without paying tribute 
for them to the Syrian kings ; and that the 
latter should not presume to march armies 
through Palestine without permission. This 



last clause was doubtless intended to check 
the enterprises of the kings of Syria against 
Egypt. Ambassadors were appointed to see 
all this executed; and the Jewish deputa- 
tion were furnished with money to bear their 
expenses home. Hyrcanus was too sensible 
of the importance of these favours to neglect 
the expression of his gratitude; and the 
next year another embassy was sent to Rome 
with a present of a cup and shield of gold, 
which the senate accepted, and passed an- 
other decree confirming the former. By 
these treaties, as well as by the unquiet state 
of the Syrian kingdom, Hyrcanus was much 
strengthened in what we may now call his 
dominions. 

Demetrius was one of those men whom 
even adversity could not improve. After 
his restoration, he fell into the same mis- 
conduct which had before occasioned him 
the loss of his kingdom. His subjects again 
were alienated from him; and readily joined 
a competitor who was brought forward and 




[Alexander Zebinas.] 

supported by P. Physcon, in revenge for the 
recent attempt of Demetrius to take pos- 
session of his kingdom. The young man put 
forward on this occasion was the son of a 
merchant of Alexandria, and claimed to be 
the adopted son of Antiochus Sidetes, or 
(according to some) of Alexander Balas. He 
assumed the name of Alexander, but was 
nicknamed in derision, Zebinas [' the bought 
one ']. Notwithstanding the weakness of his 
pretensions, he easily succeeded in depriving 
the universally-disliked Demetrius of his 
kingdom and life, 126 B.C. 

Zebinas was an equitable and popular ruler; 
but he did not obtain the whole of the king- 
dom, as part was retained by Cleopatra — that 
wife of many husbands who has so often been 



g a 



450 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



1 



named. To strengthen her cause she caused 
Seleucus, her son by Demetrius, to be pro- 
claimed king of Syria, but retained all power 
in her own hands; and when in the twentieth 
year of his age (124 b.c.) he manifested a de- 
sire really to reign, she slew him by a javelin 
with her own hands. Alexander Zebinas, on 
the other hand, strengthened his cause by 
an alliance with John Hyrcanus, who skil- 
fully availed himself of all these troubles 
to confirm his independence and to enlarge 
his dominions. Zebinas could not, however, 
long maintain his position. A very proper and 
spirited refusal to do homage to P. Physcon 
for the crown of Syria lost him the support, 
and procured him the enmity, of that mo- 
narch, who immediately came to terms with 
Cleopatra, and furnished her with an army 
whereby Zebinas was defeated, and ultimately 
fell into the hands of Ptolemy, who put him 
to death. Thus Cleopatra became mistress 
of all Syria, her younger son by Demetrius, 
Antiochus VIII., surnamed Gryphus, ['hook- 
nosed,' from ypvyfs, a vulture,] being seated 
on the throne. Soon after (120 b.c), finding 
that Gryphus was also disposed to claim the 
power as well as name of king, she prepared 
poison for him; but she was detected, and 
the king compelled his murderous mother to 
drink the poisoned cup herself. 

Ptolemy Physcon died in 117 b.c, twenty- 
nine years after his brother Philometor. He 
left all power in the hands of Cleopatra, 
his wife and daughter-in-law — sister of the 
Syrian queen, whose doom concluded the 
last paragraph. Physcon had by her two 
sons, Lathyrus and Alexander, and left to 
Cleopatra the choice of a king from them. 
She would have preferred the youngest, 
Alexander ; but the voice of the people 
compelled her to appoint Ptolemy Lathyrus. 

Antiochus Gryphus had a half brother, 
whom his mother Cleopatra had borne to 
Antiochus Sidetes. This young prince was 
sent by his mother to be brought up at 
Cyzicus on the Propontis, and hence his 
name of Antiochus Cyzicenus. He soon ap- 
peared as a competitor for the Syrian throne, 
and after various conflicts the brothers agreed 
in 112 b.c to divide the empire between them. 
Antiochus Cyzicenus obtained Coele-Syria and 



Phoenicia, and fixed his residence at Damascus. 
Both the kings were heartless libertines; and 
their relatively uneasy position gave them too 
much employment, in watching and annoying 
each other, to permit them to interfere much 
with the J ews, whose princes well knew how 
to avail themselves of such opportunities to 
aggrandise the power of the nation. 

There is one exception. In 110 b.c Hyr- 
canus ventured to besiege Samaria, the in- 
habitants of which were not Samaritans, pro- 
perly so called, but were descended from the 
Syro-Macedonian colony which Alexander 
planted there when he rooted out the former 
inhabitants. The siege was conducted by 
Hyrcanus himself, with his two sons Aris- 
tobulus and Antigonus. They enclosed the 
city by a wall and a ditch, and all supplies 
being thus completely cut off, the place 
was soon reduced to the last extremity from 
scarcity of food. In this emergency the be- 
sieged sent to Antiochus Cyzicenus suppli- 
cating his aid. He marched himself to afford 
it, but was met on the way by a detachment 
of the J ewish army, under the command of 
Aristobulus. In a bloody engagement the 
Syrians were totally routed, and Antiochus 
Cyzicenus himself escaped with difficulty. 
In the next year (109 b.c) Samaria was 
taken, and totally demolished. This victory, 
with its results, made Hyrcanus master of all 
Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and of several 
places beyond their limits ; and raised the 
glory of the Asamonean princes to its height. 
Hyrcanus spent the rest of his reign without 
foreign wars, and respected by all the neigh- 
bouring potentates. He died in 106 b.c, 
after a reign of thirty years. 

It is to the last days of Hyrcanus we must 
refer the commencement of that interference 
of the Pharisees in public affairs, and of that 
enmity to the Asamonean house, which will 
bring them often under our notice in the 
subsequent pages of this narrative. The 
origin of the difference, which induced Hyr- 
canus to attach himself to the Sadducees, 
suffices to show that there were persons in 
Israel who were dissatisfied at the concen- 
tration of all civil and pontifical power in the 
same hands*. 

* The story is :— At an entertainment given by Hyrcanus 



CHAP. IV.J 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



451 



Hyrcanus left the principality to his wife ; 
but Aristobulus, his eldest son, soon pos- 
sessed himself of the government ; and as his 
mother refused to lay down her authority, he 
committed her to prison, where she perished 
of hunger. Haying established himself in the 
principality and high-priesthood, Aristobulus 
ventured on the very questionable step of 
assuming the diadem and regal title. And 
thus (as seems to have been predicted by 
Zechariah, vi. 9 — 15) was brought about that 
state of things, which early existed in Egypt 
and other countries, in which the offices of 
king and high-priest were united in the same 
person. Aristobulus availed himself of the 
disagreements between the two kings of Syria 
to extend his dominions. He subdued Iturea 
beyond Jordan, and offered the inhabitants 
the alternative of circumcision or expatria- 
tion. They preferred the former, and accord- 
ingly became Jews, and were incorporated 
with the Jewish nation. Aristobulus fell sick 
during this campaign, leaving his brother 

to the Pharisees, of whose sect he was a jealous member, 
he, not very wisely we imagine, invited the persons present 
to inform him of any failure in his duty towards God or 
man, which might have come to their knowledge. As 
might be expected, he got from the guests all the compli- 
ments for which he so obviously laid himself out ; the 
room rung with testimonials of his blameless conduct, and 
with praise of his many virtues. When this had ceased, 
one Eleazer ventured to say that he ought to resign the 
high-priesthood, and to content himself with the civil 
government of the nation. This was too true not to be 
galling; and Eleazer was pressed for a reason in such a 
manner as made him fearful of the consequences, and to 
think it better to make his objection puerile, by raising it 
on a ground on which he could not but know it would not 
stand. He alleged that the mother of Hyrcanus having at 
one time been a captive, it was uncertain whether he was a 
descendant of Aaron or of a pagan. This, Joscphus tells 
us, was palpably untrue, and if so, it could only have been 
used, as we suggest, for an evasion. As it was, Hyrcanus 
was deeply offended; and the Saddueees adroitly managed 
to put all the Pharisees out of his good opinion. Jonathan, 
his intimate friend and a Sadducee, persuaded him that 
the whole party concurred with Eleazer, as he might ascer- 
tain by the very inadequate punishment which they would, 
if asked, name as the due of that free-spoken person. 
Jonathan knew that the Pharisees were such fatalists, that 
they took a low view of a man's penal responsibility for 
his own actions, and were therefore much milder in their 
punishments than the Saddueees, who maintained the per- 
fect freedom of man's will to choose and act. This seems 
to have been overlooked by Hyrcanus, and when they 
named only imprisonment and scourging as the just punish- 
ment of a man whom he appears to have thought worthy 
of death— his displeasure knew no bounds, and he re- 
nounced all connection with the sect. Upon the whole, 
Hyrcanus does not shine much in this affair, although his- 
torians report it to his honour. 



Antigonus to complete the subjection of the 
country, and the settlement of its affairs. 
On the return of the latter to Jerusalem, the 
king was taught to regard him as one who 
aimed at his life and kingdom, and under 
that mistaken impression, ordered his death. 
Discovering his error, he fell sick and died, 
after a reign of only one year, 105 B.C. 

He was succeeded by his brother, the third 
son of Hyrcanus, Alexander Jannjsus, whose 
Hebrew name was probably Jonathan; as the 
name of "Jonathan" or "King Jonathan," 
occurs on some coins in the Hebrew, while 
the reverse has the legend "King Alexander" 
in Greek. He had been brought up in Galilee, 
and from early childhood he had not been 
admitted to the presence of his father. 
Alexander pursued the policy of his pre- 
decessors, of turning to his own advantage 
the divisions in the Syrian empire. Nor was 
he singular in this, for many cities (Tyre, 
Ptolernais, Gaza, Dora, and others) had 
contrived to make themselves independent. 
The last three of the cities we have named, 
Alexander Jannseus desired to subdue to his 
own power, which seems to us a very unprin- 
cipled design ; but it is difficult to find any- 
thing like principle in the public transac- 
tions of any parties in this most unprincipled 
age. In 104 B.C. he took the field against 
Ptolernais, and detached a part of his army 
against Dora and Gaza. Before this time 
(namely, in 107 B.C.) Ptolemy Lathyrus had 
been expelled from Egypt by his mother, 
and withdrew to Cyprus, where he reigned 
up to the date to which we have now come. 
To him the beleaguered cities now applied 
for aid. This he readily granted, and landed 
in Palestine with an army of 30,000 men. 
He was very successful, defeating Alexander 
in a pitched battle on the banks of the J or- 
dan, in which the Jews lost 30,000 men, and 
then overrunning and furiously ravaging the 
country, so that the Asamonean cause seemed 
on the brink of utter ruin, when Cleopatra, 
the queen of Egypt*, fearing that the con- 
quest of Palestine by Lathyrus would be but 
a step towards the invasion of Egypt, sent an 

* Her favourite son Alexander had been set by her on 
the throne on the expulsion of Lathyrus; but the mother 
actually reigned. 



<J % % 



452 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



army to the assistance of Alexander. By this 
means he recovered his footing, and Lathyrus 
was compelled to withdraw to Cyprus, 101 B.C. 
Alexander had gained none of the original 
objects of the war he had so unjustly com- 
menced, and the nation had suffered greatly. 
The king soon after paid a visit to the 
Egyptian queen, to whom he had been so 
much indebted. This visit had nearly proved 
fatal to him. This ambitious and unscrupulous 
woman was advised to put him to death, and 
unite Judea to Egypt: and she was inclining 
to listen to such suggestions, when the inter- 
position of Ananias, the Jewish commander 
of her forces, inclined her to a more just and 
generous policy, and she concluded an alliance 
with Jannseus at Bethshan (Scythopolis). 

After Cleopatra had returned to her own 
country, Alexander began to resume his 
former projects of reducing to his yoke the 
towns and fortresses on his borders — pursu- 
ing, in short, the same needlessly aggressive 
policy which had well nigh been his ruin. 
Gadara he took after a ten months' siege. 
He also took the strong fortress of Amathus 
beyond J ordan ; but on his return he was 
surprised and defeated with the loss of 10,000 
men, by the prince of Philadelphia, whose 
treasures had been deposited there, and re- 
turned with disgrace to Jerusalem. He was a 
Sadducee: this, and his other humiliations, 
were therefore matters of high satisfaction to 
the Pharisees, who had great influence with 
the mass of the people, which they employed 
with much success, to alienate their affec- 
tions from Alexander. The king, nothing- 
discouraged, turned his attention to the towns 
on his southern border. Raphia and Anthedon 
he took: the conquest of Gaza was more dif- 
ficult; but at last he won it by treachery, 
burned it, and massacred the inhabitants, 
but with so much loss to his own troops that 
he returned with little honour and less spoil 
to Jerusalem. 

The long-cherished hatred of the Pharisees, 
and dislike of the people towards the king, 
broke out openly in the year 95 b.c. He 
was officiating as high-priest at the Feast of 
Tabernacles, and was offering sacrifice upon 
the great altar, when the people began to 
pelt him furiously with the citrons which 



they bore in their- hands at that celebration, 
at the same time assailing him with the most 
opprobrious expressions. In accordance with 
the severe principles of the Sadducees, which 
he had on so many occasions exemplified, he 
let loose his guard upon the insurgents, by 
whom 6000 of them were cut down, and thus 
the disturbance was, for the time, allayed 
with blood. To prevent such insults in fu- 
ture, he enclosed the priests' court, which 
contained the altar and sanctuary, by a 
wooden partition, which excluded 'the ap- 
proach of the people, and for his greater 
security he took into his pay a body of 6000 
foreign mercenaries, who soon became almost 
his only support. 

After this Alexander Jannseus turned his 
attention to the countries beyond Jordan. 
In 94 b.c he made the Arabs of Gilead and 
the inhabitants of Moab tributary. In 93 
b.c. he destroyed the strong fortress of Ama- 
thus, his former enterprise against which had 
been followed by his defeat, as lately men- 
tioned. In the next year, while in a cam- 
paign against Obodas, the Emir of the Arabs 
of Gaulonitis, he fell into an ambush in the 
mountains near Gadara, where his army was 
driven over the precipices and utterly de- 
stroyed, and he himself escaped with difficulty. 
This disaster embittered the feelings of the 
already discontented Pharisees, who were at 
all times jealous even to madness of the 
national honour. A successful and glorious 
Sadducee they might have borne, but an un- 
successful one was intolerable. They took 
up arms, supported by the masses, and broke 
out into open rebellion, which they main- 
tained for six years, and in which, although 
repeatedly defeated, their refractory spirit re- 
mained unsubdued. At last, after 50,000 of 
the malcontents had been destroyed, besides 
the loss on the other side, the king, although 
successful, became weary of slaughter and 
intestine turmoil, and made every effort and 
declared his readiness to make any sacrifice 
for the sake of peace. He sent some of his 
friends to the assembled people to know 
what he could do to satisfy them — "Die!" 
was the answer, given with such vehemence 
and fury as showed him that there was no 
hope of accommodation. The malcontents 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



4o3 



on their part, sought the help of the Moabites 
and the Arabians of Gilead, whom Alexander 
had made tributary, and whose tribute he 
was now obliged to remit, to prevent their 
hostilities. The invitation was then sent 

j to Demetrius Eucerus, king of Damascus*. 
He gladly accepted the call, and entered 
Judea with an army of forty thousand foot 
and three thousand horse, with which he 
overthrew Alexander, with the loss of all 
his Greek mercenaries to a man. B.C. 89. 
His utter ruin was inevitable, had it not 
been that six thousand of the Jews them- 
selves, taking compassion upon his distress, 
deserted from the Syrians, and joined him. 
This so much alarmed Demetrius, fearing 
lest the defection should extend, that he 
withdrew his forces from the country to 
employ them against his brother Philip, 
who had obtained possession of part of Syria. 
The indomitable spirit of Alexander J annseus, 
and the large resources which he found in 
himself, now very conspicuously appeared ; 
for no sooner had the Syrians departed than 
he again got together his broken army, 
and recommenced operations with increased 
vigour and success against his own discon- 
tented subjects. In one great action, fought 
in 87 B.C., he utterly cut off the greater part 
of the insurgent army, and shut up the re- 
mainder in Bethone, which he besieged and 
took the year after. On this occasion he was 
guilty of a most barbarous act, for which the 
nick-name of " Thracian" was justly given to 
him. He sent eight hundred of the principal 
captives to Jerusalem, and there crucified 
them all in one day and in one place, and 
put their wives and children to death be- 
fore their eyes, as they hung dying on the 
crosses, while he sat, feasting with his w r ives 
and concubines, within view of the horrid 
scene, to glut his eyes with their torments. 
Certainly, the existence of a man who could 
do this was an evil upon the earth ; and it 
seems alone sufficient to induce a suspicion 
that there was good cause for the intense 

j dislike with which he was regarded by the 

j people. 

* The affairs of Syria and Egypt have by this time be- 
come so disconnected with tho-e of Palestine, that it will 
I not be necessary to trace them further. 



After this Alexander had no more dis- 
I turbance, and he was enabled to spend three 
i years in recovering the fortresses which had 
j revolted, and in reducing the provinces be- 
yond Jordan which had got loose from his 
dominion during the civil war. Returning 
victorious to Jerusalem in 82 B.C., he aban- 
doned himself to luxury and revelling, which 
speedily brought on a quartan ague, under 
which he languished for three years, and of 
which he died in 78 B.C., at the siege of Ra- 
gaba beyond Jordan, in the country of the 
Gergesenes, in the forty-ninth year of his age, 
and the twenty-seventh of his eventful reign. 
That reign might be deemed successful in 
its ultimate results, if judged only by the 
enlarged dominion which he left to his suc- 
cessors; for at his death the Jewish kingdom 
included Mount Carmel, and all the coast 
as far as Rhinocolura ; it embraced on the 
south all Idumea ; northward it extended to 
Scythopolis (Bethshan) and Mount Tabor; and 
beyond Jordan it comprehended Gaulonitis, 
and all the territory of Gadara, including the 
land of the Moabites on the- south, and ex- 
tending as far as Pella on the east. 

Alexander Jannaeus left the government 
in the hands of his Queen Alexandra, in- 
fluenced doubtless by the recent example of 
the female reigns in Egypt and Syria. She 
w T as to enjoy the government while she lived, 
and was to determine which of her two sons, 
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, should succeed 
her. On the approach of death, Alexander 
gave such counsels as he judged best cal- 
culated to ensure her a peaceable reign. 
Sensible that most of his own troubles had 
been produced through the agency of the 
great control which the Pharisees had ac- 
quired over public opinion, he exhorted her 
above all things to cultivate their favour, 
and to attempt no public measure without 
their approval. This advice may have been 
good, but the motive claims no high com- 
mendation. He wished his wife to reign 
after him, and to secure that private object 
he was willing that all the energies of the 
government should be sacrificed, and that 
all the powers of the state should be thrown 
into the hands of men whom, whether justly 
or not, he despised and hated. He also 



454 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



instructed the queen what course to take 
in throwing herself into the hands of the 
Pharisees. He counselled her to conceal 
his death until the capture of the fortress, 
and then, on the triumphant return to Je- 
rusalem, she was to convene the heads of the 
Pharisees, and offer to be guided entirely by 
their counsels in the administration of the 
government ; she was also to lay his dead 
body before them, and leave it wholly to 
their discretion whether to treat it with ig- 
nominy or honour. " If thou dost but this," 
concluded the king, " / shall be sure of a 
glorious funeral, and thou wilt rule in safety. 1 ' 
Alexandra followed all his directions to the 
letter, and the event answered to his predic- 
tion. The Pharisees were suddenly appeased, 
as by a miracle ; they spoke with profound 
reverence of the king, whose death they had 
so often invoked; they lauded to the skies his 
heroic achievements, and none of all his pre- 
decessors had a funeral nearly as magnificent 
as that of Alexander JannEeus. 

The Pharisees, having now the upper hand 
in the state, proceeded to do what any suc- 
cessful party would have done in the same 
circumstances. They released all the pri- 
I soners, and recalled all the exiles of their 
own party ; and being thus strengthened by 
the recovery of the ablest men of their body, 
they delayed not to demand justice against 
the advisers of the crucifixion of the eight 
hundred; and certainly, if there were any 
persons active in advising that dreadful 
enormity, they richly deserved punishment. 
Diogenes, the chief confidant of the late 
king, was the first to feel the wrath and 
vengeance of the Pharisees ; and after he 
had been cut off, they proceeded to the 
more obnoxious of Alexander's advisers. 
The queen, sore against her will, submitted 
to all their demands, to avoid the worst 
evils of a civil war. 

Queen Alexandra appointed to the high- 
priesthood her eldest son Hyrcanus, a person 
of mild and inactive disposition, ill qualified 
to take part in the turmoils of the troubled 
days in which he was cast. The other son, 
Aristobulus, was of a different spirit— with 
the same impulsive energies of character, 
and nearly as unscrupulous, as his father. 



He burned with indignation at the degraded, 
although safe, position which his mother oc- 
cupied ; and in the seventh year of her reign 
(72 b.c.) he appeared before her at the head 
of a large party of friends of congenial senti- 
ments, and solicited permission either to leave 
the country or to be permitted to retire to the 
frontier garrison towns, where they might be 
secure from the malice of the Pharisees. The 
queen agreed to the latter proposal, and put 
them in possession of all the fortresses, ex- 
cept Hyrcania, Alexandrium, and Machserus, 
where she kept her treasures. Next year 
Aristobulus was entrusted with the command 
of an army sent against Damascus, but he 
returned without doing anything memorable, 
although he was mindful not to neglect the 
opportunity of ingratiating himself with the 
troops. 

In the year 69 B.C. some attempts made by 
Selene (reigning in Ptolemais) to extend her 
dominions in Coele-Syria, drew the attention 




[Tigranes.] 



of Tigranes, the Armenian king, whom the 
Syrians had called to reign over them. He 
came against her with a large army, sub- 
dued Ptolemais, took Selene prisoner, and 
ultimately ordered her to be put to death at 
Seleucia, on the Tigris. Her sons were at 
Rome. While Tigranes was engaged before 
Ptolemais, Alexandra sent an embassy with 
valuable presents to obtain his friendship. 
The rapid progress which the Romans were 
at this time making in Asia Minor so strongly 
called his attention to that quarter, that 
he returned a more favourable answer than 
might have been expected, and hastened 
back to his own country. Queen Alexandra 
died in the same year. 

On the death of his mother the mild and 
feeble Hyrcanus took possesion of the throne. 
He reigned only three months. His more en- 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



455 



The great war of the Romans m Asia 
Minor against Mithridates king of Pontus 
is of importance from its result of bringing 
all Western Asia under the power of the 
Romans ; but the circumstances of that war 
have no such connection with our history as 
to require their exhibition in this place. 
Tigranes was soon involved in this war ; and 
in 69 B.C. he was obliged to withdraw his 
forces from Syria to make head against the 
Romans nearer home. 

This gave an opportunity to Antiochus 
Asiaticus, the son of Selene and A. Eusebes, 




terpridng and able brother, Aristobulus, had j to them over the walls the full sum they 
obtained possession of most of the fortresses | demanded for such permission 
in the kingdom during the sickness of his 
mother: the people, also, had by this time 
| grown weary of the tyranny of the Pharisees, 
and greatly fearing the possible results of 
their ascendancy over such a person as Hyr- 
canus, readily declared themselves in favour 
of his brother: and as the soldiers also de- 
serted to him, Hyrcanus had no alternative 
but to resign his crown and mitre to Aristo- 
bulus ; and he agreed, with little reluctance, 
to lead a private life under his protection. 
" So," as Josephus expresses it, " Aristobulus 
went to the palace, and Hyrcanus to the 
house of Aristobulus." 

An Idumean originally called Antipas, but 
better known by the name of Antipater, had 
by this time become a great man in Juclea. 
He was high in the confidence of Alexander 
Jannseus, and of Queen Alexandra, who had 
entrusted him with the government of his 
native province of Idumea. He had amassed 
considerable wealth, and formed connections 
with the Arabs in the east, and with the 
Gazites and Ascalonites in the west. Such 
a man might expect, under a weak ruler like 
Hyrcanus, to benefit largely by the distrac- 
tions of the country ; whereas the firm rule 
of a man like Aristobulus was calculated to 
nip all his budding hopes. This considera- 
tion decided him to take up the cause of the 
deposed Hyrcanus, whom he gradually drew 
into the belief that his brother had designs 
against his life ; and after much solicitation, 
persuaded him to flee to Petra, and claim 
the protection of the Arabian king Aretas. 
That prince readily espoused his cause, and 
brought him back to Judea, with an army of 
50,000 men; and being there joined by such 
of the Jews as favoured the cause of the 
elder brother, he gave battle to Aristobulus, 
defeated him, and compelled him, with the 
heads of his party, to take refuge in the 
temple-mount, and besieged him there, 
66 b.c. 

So great was the hatred of the besiegers 
against Aristobulus and his party that, at 
the feast of the Passover, they would allow- 
no animals for sacrifices to be carried into 



[Antiochus XL, Asiaticus.] 

to seize the government; and, having con- 
tracted an alliance with the Roman general 
Lucullus, he contrived to retain a part of 
the empire until the arrival of Pompey in 
the East. He arrived to take the command 
of the Roman armies in the year 66 B.C. 
While himself employed in the north against 
Mithridates and Tigranes, Pompey sent 
Scaurus into Syria. While that general 
was at Damascus he received from Aristo- 
bulus (then besieged in the temple) an 
application with the offer of four hundred 
talents if he would come to his aid. The 
offer of a similar sum soon after came from 
Hyrcanus ; but the Roman, considering that 
it would be easier to frighten away the 




[Pompey and his sons.] 

besieging Nabathaeans for Aristobulus, than 
to take so strong a fortress for Hyrcanus, 
determined to accept the offer of the former. 



the temple, although Aristobulus had given | He accordingly , received the money; and 



456 



THE BIBLE HISTORY, 



three hundred talents were also given to 
Gabinius. Scaurus then commanded Aretas 
to abandon the siege and quit the country, 
or expect that the Roman arms would be 
turned against him. Awed by this threat, 
the Arabian king immediately obeyed ; but 
he was pursued and overtaken in his home- 
ward march by the active Aristobulus, and 
defeated with great slaughter. 

In 65 B.C. Pompey came into Syria, all the 
princes of which were prepared to look to 
him as the arbiter of their fate. Antiochus 
Asiaticus humbly sued to be confirmed in 
his kingdom; but he was refused, on the 
pretext that he was too weak to defend the 
country against the Jews and Arabs; and 
that the Romans having overcome Tigranes, 
Syria became theirs by right of conquest, 
and they were not disposed to forego the 
rewards of their toils. In the person of 
Antiochus XI. was deposed the last of a 
regal dynasty, descended from Seleucus, 
which had ruled Syria for two hundred and 
forty-seven years. His dominions, together 
with Phoenicia, then passed into the con- 
dition of a Roman province. 

Twelve kings, and many ambassadors, re- 
paired to Damascus to render their homage 
to the illustrious Roman, or to receive from 
him the award of their fate. Aristobulus, 
to whom the recognition of his title by the 
Romans was at this time of great import- 
ance, sent an embassy with the present of a 
golden vine, valued at 500 talents. But as 
those who saw this vine subsequently in the 
capitol at Rome declare that it bore the 
name of Alexander Janmeus* it would 
seem that he was not successful in his appli- 
cation f, unless, as some imagine, the vine 
had been made by Alexander Janngeus and 
placed in the temple, from which it was 
taken by his son to be presented to the 
Romans J. 

* Strabo in Joseph. Antiq. xiv. 3. 

t It is well known that the Romans in receiving such 
presents often inscribed upon them the names, not of the 
actual donor, if they disliked to recognise him, but of a 
predecessor who might be supposed to have had the inten- 
tion of making the present, if death or other circumstances 
had not intervened. 

$ Among the kings present at Damascus was Ptolemy 
Alexander, the king of Egypt, who had been lately depos°d 
by his subjects. He applied to be re-established on his 
throne, but as his request was neglected, he withdrew to 



[book V. 



The next year, 64 e.g., Pompey again 
returned to Damascus from Asia Minor, 
with large designs for the southward ex- 
tension of the Roman power, which had 
already been established as far as the Cas- 
pian in the north. At that place, the com- 
peting Jewish princes produced their cause 
before him. Hyrcanus through Antipater, 
and Aristobulus through Nicodemus. The 
delegates were heard, and dismissed in a 
friendly manner, with orders that the two 
brothers should appear in person. Unfor- 
tunately for Aristobulus his cause was much 
prejudiced by the allusion of Nicodemus to 
the bribes which Scaurus and Gabinius had 
received, whereby he provoked the resent- 
ment of two persons whose influence with 
Pompey was very great. As ordered, Hyr- 
canus and Aristobulus appeared at Damascus 
in the spring of 63 B.C. to plead their own 
cause before Pompey, and each attended by 
multitudes of witnesses to prove the justice 
of their respective claims. A third Jewish 
party, uninvited and undesired by either of 
the others, also appeared, in the persons of 
many J ews of high consideration, who were 
prepared to plead, and did plead, against 
both the brothers, that in order to enslave 
a free people they had changed the form 
of government from pontifical to regal, 
contrary to established usage and precedent. 
Hyrcanus, on his part, rested on his rights 
as the elder brother, and complained of "the 
usurpation of Aristobulus : the latter pleaded 
the necessity which the imbecile character of 
Hyrcanus had imposed upon him. This was 
precisely the worst plea he could have made; 
for imbecility of character was, for their own 
selfish ends, far from being esteemed a dis- 
qualification by the Romans in the princes 
Tyre, where he soon, after died, bequeathing his kingdom 
to the Romans. The Egyptians had placed on the throne 
Ptolemy Auletes ['the piper'], also called Neos Diony- 
sius, ['young Dionysius,'] an illegitimate son of P. La- 
thyrus; and he also sent ambassadors to Pompev at Da- 
mascus, with a golden crown valued at four thousand 
pieces of gold. He acquired the friendship of Pompey, 
which stood him in great stead afterwards; for after he had 
been expelled by the Egyptians, to whom he had rendered 
himself odious by his vices and low habits, he was restored 
b/ the Romans, chiefly through the influence of that 
powerful friend, 55 B.C. He died in 51 B.C., leaving two sons, 
both named Ptolemy, and two daughters, Cleopatra and 
Arsinoe, the former famous for the part she bears in the 
history of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. 



CHAF, IV.] 



THE ASAMONEAN PRINCES. 



457 



i under their control. However, Pompey did 
not openly declare his sentiments, but left 
the matter undecided, until he should have 
leisure to come in person to Jerusalem, and 
settle it there But Aristobulus, perceiving 
clearly that the decision would not be in 
his favour, withdrew without taking leave, 
in order to make the requisite preparations, 
and he thus rendered his case still more 
desperate. 

Pompey was occupied for a time in re- 
ducing Aretas and his Nabathseans to sub- 
jection. This being effected, he marched 
against Aristobulus, of whose hostile pre- 
parations he was well apprised. He found 
him in the frontier fortress of Alexandrium 
(which was situated upon the top of a high 
rock), and well prepared for an attack. On 
his arrival, Pompey summoned the Jewish 
prince to his presence ; . and Aristobulus, 
afraid of irritating him by a refusal, and 
relying on his honour, came down, and had 
' several interviews with the Roman general, 
who, in the end, refused to let him go, until 
he had signed an order for the surrender of 
all the fortresses to the Romans. But, re- 
senting deeply this imposition, Aristobulus 
was no sooner dismissed than he fled to 
Jerusalem, and there prepared for a siege. 
But when Pompey approached with his army 
his resolution forsook him, as well it might ; 
and he went forth to meet the Roman, to 
whom he tendered his submission, and offered 
a sum of money to prevent a war. His pro- 
posal was accepted ; and Gabinius, one of 
Pompey's lieutenants, whom there has been 
previous occasion to name, was sent with a 
! body of troops to recover the city, and to 
j receive the money. But when Aristobulus 
returned with the Romans, his own party 
j shut the gates against him and them, on 
i which the captive prince was put in chains. 

Pompey then himself marched to Jerusalem; 
1 1 and the party of Hyrcanus being the most 
numerous in the city, and well aware of his 
favourable dispositions towards them, opened 
I the gates to him. The party of Aristobulus 
' now withdrew into the temple, which was by 
| this time a strong fortress, fully resolved to 
abide the result of a siege. They held out 
for three months, and might have done so 
. — _____ 



much longer, but for the remaining supersti- 
tion respecting the Sabbath. Pompey being 
apprised, that although that on that, as on 
any other day, they would stand on their 
defence if actually attacked, they would not 
on that day act on the offensive, or disturb 
any operations short of actual assault, — he 
sagaciously made use of every Sabbath in 
filling up the ditch and planting his engines, 
in which he experienced not the least op- 
position, and this enabled him to make his 
attacks with more effect on the other days 
of the week. At last the temple was taken 
by assault, in the first year of the 179th 
Olympiad, ending in 63 B.C., the same year 
in which 0. Antonius and M. Tullius Cicero 
were consuls, and on the very day observed 
with fasting and humiliation, on account of 
the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. 
These dates fixed the year from which the 
direct rule of the Romans over Judea may 
be dated. 

Pompey violated the sanctity of the temple 
by intruding with his principal officers into 
the holy of holies. He was not stricken as 
Ptolemy Philopator and Heliodorus had been, 
but it has been remarked, by some, that he 
never prospered in any of his subsequent 
undertakings. By the Jews, of course, this 
act was deeply resented. Pompey, however, 
spared the sacred treasury, although it con- 
tained 2000 talents ; and the sacred utensils, 
and other articles of great value, were left 
for the sacred uses to which they had been 
devoted. But he ordered the walls of Jeru- 
salem to be demolished. Hyrcanus he ap- 
pointed to be high-priest and prince of the 
country, on condition that he should submit 
to the Romans, pay tribute, not assume the 
crown, nor seek to extend his territory beyond 
the ancient limits of Judea. All the places 
beyond those limits, which the Jews had con- 
quered, were also restored to Syria, which 
was made a Roman province, and left under 
the rule of Scaurus as prefect, with two 
legions to preserve tranquillity. Thus the 
Jews, from being old allies of the Romans, 
were at once reduced to the condition of a 
subordinate principality, and were compelled 
to pay large tribute to the conquerors. 

Pompey returned to Rome, laden with the 



458 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



spoils of conquered nations, and with a long 
train of royal and illustrious captives to grace 
his triumph. Among them were Aristobulus, 
his two daughters, and his two sons, Alex- 
ander and Antigonus. Alexander escaped 
by the way, and returned to Judea. The 
rest were among the three hundred and 
twenty-four noble prisoners who graced the 
triumph of Pompey, in 61 B.C. Pompey was 



the first to discontinue the barbarous custom 
of putting the captives to death in the capi- 
tol after this public exhibition. They were 
all liberated, and sent home at the public 
expense, with the exception of Tigranes and 
Aristobulus, who were detained lest they 
should excite disturbances in their respective 
countries. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE KOMANS. 



Although Hyrcanus II. had again become 
the nominal head of the reduced and de- 
pendent princedom of Judea, Antipater was 
the actual governor, and managed all things 
as he would. 

In the year 57 B.C. Alexander, the eldest 
son of Aristobulus, who had escaped on the 
way to Rome, reappeared in Judea, and soon 
succeeded in collecting an army of ten thou- 
sand foot and fifteen hundred horse. He 
seized and garrisoned the strong fortresses of 
Alexandrium, Machserus, Hyrcania, and 
several others ; and thence ravaged the 
whole country. Hyrcanus was not in a con- 
dition to make head against him: but for 
the protection of Jerusalem he was desirous 
of rebuilding the walls of that city; but 
this was forbidden by the jealousy of the 
Romans, and the prince was then obliged to 
apply to them for assistance. Gabinius (the 
same who had before been in the country 
with Pompey), who had lately become pro- 
consul of Syria, sent some troops into Judea 
under the command of Mark Anthony, the 
commander of the cavalry — who afterwards 
took so conspicuous a part in the affairs of 
Rome, while he prepared to follow himself 
with a larger army. The Roman general, 
being joined by Antipater with the forces of 
Hyrcanus, defeated Alexander near Jeru- 
salem, with the loss of three thousand men, 
and compelled him to seek refuge in Alex- 
andrium, to which siege was immediately 
laid. Gabinius, who had now arrived, per- 



ceiving that the reduction of so strong a 
place would require time, left a sufficient 
force to invest it, and with the rest made a 
progress through the country. Many cities 
which he found in ruins, he directed to be 
rebuilt, according to the intentions of Pom- 
pey*: among these was Samaria, which, 
after his own name, he called Gabiama, which 
was not long after changed by Herod to Se- 
baste. When he returned to the camp at 
Alexandrium he was visited by the mother 
of the besieged Alexander, who had already 
offered to capitulate, and now, by her address 
and mediation, was allowed to depart on con- 
dition that the fortresses which he held in 
his power should be demolished, that they 
might give no occasion for future revolts. 

Gabinius then went to Jerusalem, and con- 
firmed Hyrcanus in the high-priesthood: but 
he took upon him to change the government 
to an aristocracy, undoubtedly at the request 
of the Jews themselves, who had formerly 
much desired such a change from Pompey. 
Hitherto the administration of public affairs 
had been managed, under the prince, by two 
councils, or courts of justice ; the lesser, 
consisting of twenty-three persons, was in- 
stituted in every city, and each of these 
lesser councils was subject to the control of 
the great council, or Sanhedrim, of seventy- 
two members, sitting at Jerusalem. Both 

* Those were— Scythcpolis (Belhshan), Samaria, Dora. 
Azotus or Ashdod, Jamnia, Gaza, Anthedon, Raphia, 
Gamala, Apollonia, Marissa, and some others. 



CHAP. V.] 

were suppressed by Gabinius, who divided 
the country into five districts, appointing in 
each an executive council for its government. 
These districts will be sufficiently indicated 
by the names of the cities in which the re- 
spective councils sat: — Jerusalem, Jericho, 
Gadara, Amathus, and Sepphoris. This, in 
fact, changed the government into an aristo- 
cracy, for all real power rested in the hands 
of the several councils, composed of the prin- 
cipal persons of each district, and the power 
of the prince was completely nullified. This 
form of government continued to the year 
44 B.C., when Hyrcanus was restored to his 
former power by Julius Csesar. 

About this time Aristobulus contrived to 
escape from his captivity at Rome, with his 
younger son Antigonus, and returned to 
Judea, where his presence excited a revolt. 
But he was ere long defeated, taken captive 
with his son, and sent back again to his 
former prison. The report which Gabinius 
sent, however, of the services which the wife 
of Aristobulus had rendered in suppressing 
her son Alexander's insurrection, procured 
the release of all the family except Aristo- 
bulus himself. 

In 56 B.C. Gabinius undertook to restore 
Ptolemy Auletes to the throne of Egypt. He 
and Mark Anthony succeeded in this object, 
in which they received no slight assistance 
from Hyrcanus, or rather from Antipater, 
who eagerly laid hold of every opportunity 
of serving and ingratiating himself with the 
Romans, through whose favour alone could 
he hope that his ambitious designs would 
ever be realised. By his means the Roman 
army was most bountifully furnished with 
provisions, arms, and money ; and measures 
were taken to dispose the Jews of Egypt to 
forward their cause, which they had large 
means of doing. While the substantial force 
of the Romans was absent on this expedi- 
tion, Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, got 
together a large army, with which he con- 
trived to make himself master of Judea, and 
massacred all the Romans who had the mis- 
fortune to fall in his way. Several fled to 
Mount Gerizim, and were there besieged by 
Alexander, when Gabinius returned victo- 
rious from Egypt. The proconsul endea- 



459 

voured, through Antipater, to make peace 
with him ; but as, although many had aban- 
doned him on the approach of the Romans, 
he was still at the head of thirty thousand 
men, he refused to listen to any terms of ac- 
commodation. In a battle, which soon fol- 
lowed, near Mount Tabor, ten thousand of 
his men were slain, and the rest dispersed. 
Gabinius then went to Jerusalem, and settled 
affairs there according to the views of Anti- 
pater, who had much influence both with 
him and Anthony. 

In the year 55 the proconsul Gabinius was 
recalled, to answer for the venality and ex- 
tortion of his government. Yet he is re- 
gretted by Josephus as one who was friendly 
to the Jews ; who, however, had to pay a 
high price for his friendship. They certainly 
gained nothing by the exchange, for the new 
proconsul, who was no other than the wealthy 
and avaricious Crassus (the colleague of 
Pompey and Julius Caesar in the triumvirate), 
who procured himself to be invested with 
unusually large powers, and who, being 
consul for that year, embarked for Syria 
before his consulship expired. Crassus was 
bent on an expedition against the Parthians : 
and he failed not, before his departure, to 
plunder the temple at Jerusalem of all the 
treasures which Pompey had spared. He 
took everything that he deemed worth 
taking, and the value of his plunder i« esti- 
mated at ten thousand talents. In the war 
against the Parthians, which was entirely 
unexpected and unprovoked, Crassus was at 
first successful ; but, in the end, he and his 
son were slain, and the Roman army dis- 
graced, B.C. 53. 

Cassius, who had commanded a wing of 
the Roman army in the battle, conducted a 
body of five hundred horse safely back to 
Syria, the government of which devolved on 
him until a successor to Crassus should be 
appointed. Having, with much ability, so 
organised the broken resources of the pro- 
vince as to defend it successfully against 
the Parthian invasion of 52 B.C., he after- 
wards marched into Judea and forced Alex- 
ander, who began raising fresh disturbances 
as soon as the news of the defeat of Crassus 
arrived in Syria, to terms of peace. 



THE ROMANS. 



460 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book 



In the civil war which broke out between 
Pompey and Caesar, Syria and Palestine were 
variously involved. When Caesar passed the 




[Julius Caesar.] 

Rubicon in 49 B.C., and made himself master 
of Rome, he thought that Aristobulus might 
be useful to his cause against that of Pompey, 
which was strong in the east ; and therefore 
sent him into Palestine, with two legions 
under his command, to keep Syria in awe. 
But Pompey's party contrived to poison him 
on the way, and thus frustrated the design. 
His always active son, Alexander, had raised 
forces in expectation of his father's arrival ; 
but Pompey sent orders to his son-in-law, 
Q. Metellus Scipio, whom he had promoted 
to the government of Syria, to put him to 
death. He was accordingly taken, brought 
to Antioch, tried, and beheaded. 

In the midst of all the causes of agitation 
in Judea — from the contests of the Asamo- 
nean princes — from the different characters 
of the governors of Syria — from the march 
of armies— from the intrigues which divided 
courts and people in the quarrel between 
Pompey and Caesar — Antipater never slept, 
was never found wanting to himself. He 
had availed himself of his power over the 
feeble Hyrcanus to make for himself a per- 
sonal influence and reputation, through the 
services he was thereby able to render to the 
various parties and peisons whose friendship 
might be useful to him. He was moreover 
the father of four sons, who understood and 
concurred in his views — all of them brave, 
ambitious, magnificent, full of spirit, and 
hopes. One of them, Phasael, was 



hi o h 



already governor of Jerusalem, and another, 
Herod, was governor of Galilee. These, it 



will be perceived, were two of the five dis- 
tricts into which the country had been di- 
vided by Gabinius. Thus the family went 
on gathering strength from day to day, while 
the Asamonean family — through the imbe- 
cility of Hyrcanus, and the reverses of Aris- 
tobulus and his sons — sustained a daily loss 
of power and influence. In the contest be- 
tween Pompey and Caesar, Antipater, who 
was under obligations to the former, was in 
a critical and difficult position. But such 
men as he are never wrong. Their felicitous 
instincts enable them to discover the falling 
cause in sufficient time to make the abandon- 
ment of it a merit with him whose star is 
rising. Thus Antipater turned in good time 
to the side of the new master; and in the 
Egyptian campaign rendered important ser- 
vices to Caesar, by bringing to his aid the 
forces concentrated in Judea, Idumea. and 
part of Arabia, while in action he displayed 
great abilities and courage, which no one 
knew better than Caesar how to appreciate 
and respect, On his return. from Egypt, the 
crown of which he had fixed on the head of 
the too-celebrated Cleopatra, the eldest 
daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, he went to 
Jerusalem, and there employed the absolute 
power he possessed quite in subservience to 
the views and wishes of Antipater. In vain did 
Antigonus, the surviving son of Aristobulus, 
appear, and plead that the lives of his father 
and brother had been lost in his cause : he 
was heard coldly, and dismissed as a trouble- 
some person. Caesar abrogated the aristo- 
cratical government which Gabinius had 
established ten years before, and confirmed 
Hyrcanus in his full powers as high-priest 
and ethnarch. He ordered the remission every 
sabbatic year of the annual tribute payable 
to the Romans: he further conceded that 
the Jews should not, as formerly, be obliged 
to provide winter quarters for the Roman 
troops, or to pay an equivalent in money ; 
and he granted such further privileges and 
immunities to the Jews throughout the em- 
pire, that the Roman yoke became very light 
upon them for a time. Antipater himself 
was appointed procurator of Judea for the 
Romans. The decree in which these privi- 
leges were embodied was engraved on brass. 



CHAF. Y.] 



THE ROMANS. 



461 



and laid up in the capitol at Rome, and in 
the temples of Zidon, Tyre, and Ascalon. 
Hyrcanus afterwards ventured, by ambas- 
sadors sent to Rome, to solicit permission to 
fortify Jerusalem, and to rebuild the walls 
which Pompey had thrown down. This was 
granted by Caesar, and immediately executed 
by Antipater. 

Julius Caesar left the government of Syria 
in the hands of Sextus Caesar, his relative, who 
was also well disposed towards the family of 
Antipater. The promotion of his son Herod 
to be governor of Galilee has already been 
noticed. He displayed great activity and 
daring in clearing his province of the robbers 
by which it had been infested. But, having 
put the leader of these banditti, with several 
of his associates to death, by his own mere 
authority, without any form of trial, the 
jealousy of several of the leading Jews was 
awakened, and they obliged Hyrcanus to 
cite him to Jerusalem to answer for his con- 
duct before the Sanhedrim. He came arrayed 
in purple, with a numerous retinue, and pre- 
sented to Hyrcanus a letter from Sextus 
Caesar, commanding him to acquit Herod 
under pain of his highest displeasure. 
The prince, who liked Herod, was well 
enough inclined to this before, and the ac- 
cusers were so damped by the young man's 
audacity, as well as by the letter, which also 
intimidated the Sanhedrim, that they all sat 
in awkward silence until one firm and honest 
voice, that of Sameas, was heard rebuking 
the members of the council for their cow- 
ardice, and predicting that the day would 
come when Herod would refuse them the 
! pardon which they were then all too ready to 
i extend to him. This was verified in the end. 
When Sameas had spoken, the Sanhedrim 
exhibited some inclination to act; but Hyr- 
canus adjourned the sitting, and gave Herod 
a hint to quit Jerusalem. He repaired to 
Sextus Caesar at Damascus, and not only 
obtained his protection, but received from 
him the government of all Coele-Syria, on 
I condition of paying a stipulated tribute. On 
this Herod collected a small army, and was 
with difficulty dissuaded by his father and 
his brother Phasael from marching to Jeru- 
salem, to avenge himself for the insult he 



considered he had received in being sum- 
moned before the Sanhedrim. 

The assassination of Sextus Caesar in 
Syria, by Bassus; and of Caesar himself at 
Rome, by Brutus, Cassius, and their con- 
federates, rekindled the flames of civil war, 
and might have prostrated the hopes of one 
less ductile than Antipater. Cassius passed 
over into Syria to secure that important pro- 
vince for the republic, and was compelled to 
exact heavy contributions to maintain the 
large army he had raised. Judea was as- 
sessed at seven hundred talents, one half of 
which Antipater commissioned his sons Pha- 
sael and Herod to raise, and entrusted the 
collection of the other half to Malichus, 
a Jew, one of the chief supporters of Hyr- 
canus. Herod won the favour of Cassius by 
the promptitude with which he produced his 
quota; but Malichus, being more dilatory, 
would have been put to death, had not Hyr- 
canus redeemed him by paying one hundred 
talents out of his own coffers. There was 
something in this affair to kindle the 
smouldering jealousy with which Malichus 
and the heads of the Jewish nation were 
disposed to regard the concentration of all 
the real power of the government in the 
hands of an Idumean and foreigner, as they 
regarded Antipater; and they plotted to de- 
stroy him and all his family. Antipater was 
poisoned by a glass of wine given to him at 
the very table of Hyrcanus : in revenge for 
which Phasael an'd Herod procured Malichus 
to be put to death by the Roman garrison at 
Tyre, in obedience to an order which they 
obtained from Cassius. 

The influence of Antipater over Hyrcanus 
being now withdrawn, the adverse party 
soon succeeded in bringing him over to their 
views, by directing his fears towards the 
overgrown and increasing power of the sons 
of Antipater. Felix, the commander of the 
Roman forces at Jerusalem, was also led into 
the same views ; for by this time (42 b.c.) 
Cassius and Brutus had been defeated and 
j slain at Philippi by Anthony and Octavius. 
j This party was, however, soon mastered by 
j the brothers, who recovered Massada and all 
| the fortresses of which it had obtained pos- 
session ; and even dared to expel Felix from 



462 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[BOOK V 



Jerusalem, as the change of affairs produced 
by the battle of Philippi, rendered it un- 
likely that the now dominant avengers of 
Cos ar would resent the insult offered to 
one employed by his slayers. They up- 
braided Hyrcanus for favouring a party 
which had always sought to curb his power, 
which had been on all occasions supported 
by the sagacious and firm counsels of Anti- 
pater. A reconciliation was, however, soon 
effected, as Herod greatly wished to strengthen 
his pretensions by a marriage with Miriam, 
or Miriamne, the beautiful grand-daughter 
of the high-priest, to whom he was accord- 
ingly espoused. 

But although the adverse party had been 
repressed, it was not extinguished; and it 
soon found a new head in the person of An- 
tigonus, the surviving son of Aristobulus, 
whose unsuccessful application to Caesar has 
lately been noticed. Nothing less was now 
professed than an intention to restore him 
to the throne of his father, his claims to 
which were strongly supported by some 
neighbouring princes, and even by the 
Roman governor of Damascus, who had been 
won by a sum of money. But when he 
arrived in Judea with his army, he was 
totally defeated by Herod, and compelled for 
the present to relinquish his purpose. 

This was the state of affairs (41 B.C.) when, 
after the battle of Philippi, Mark Anthony 
passed into Syria, to secure that important 




[Mark Anthony.] 



province for the conquerors. The discon- 
tented party sent a deputation to him soon 
after his arrival, to complain of the sons of 
Antipater. But Anthony, who had been 
already joined by Herod, and had accepted 
presents from him, was indisposed towards 
them, especially when Herod reminded him 



of the services, well known to himself, which 
Antipater had rendered to Gabinius in the 
expedition to Egypt. About the same time 
Anthony received an embassy from Hyr- 
canus, touching the ransom of the inhabit- 
ants of Gophna, Emmaus, Lydda, Thamma, 
and some other places, whom Cassius had 
sold for slaves because they refused to pay 
their portion of the seven hundred talents 
which he exacted. Anthony granted the 
application, and notified his determination 
to the Tyrians, who had probably purchased 
most of these persons, Tyre being a great 
mart for slaves. 

Nothing discouraged by the former neglect, 
one hundred Jews of the first consideration 
repaired to Anthony at Daphne near Antioch, 
to renew their complaints against Herod and 
Phasael. Anthony gave them an audience, 
and then turning to Hyrcanus, who was pre- 
sent, asked him, in their hearing, whom he 
esteemed most able to conduct the affairs of 
the government, under himself. Influenced, 
probably, by the recent contract of marriage 
between his grand-daughter and Herod, he 
named the two brothers, on which Anthony 
conferred upon them the rank and power of 
Tetrarchs, committed the affairs of Judea to 
their management, imprisoned fifteen of the 
deputies, and would have put them to death, 
had not Herod interceded for them. So 
things were managed in those times. With 
the usual pertinacity of the nation, the dis- 
contented Jews renewed the complaint at 
Tyre in a body of a thousand deputies; but 
Anthony thought proper to treat this as a 
tumultuous assembly, and ordered his sol- 
diers to disperse it, which was not done with- 
out bloodshed. Anthony was then on his' 
way to Egypt. Summoned, on his first 
arrival in Syria, to appear before him to 
account for the part she was alleged to have 
taken in assisting Cassius, Cleopatra had not 
in vain exercised upon him the fascinations 
by which Caesar had before been subdued. 
The story of Anthony's thraldom to this j 
charming but most unprincipled woman, is 
too familiar to need more than the slight 
allusions which the connection of this his- 
tory requires. Lost in luxurious ease and i 
dalliance, Anthony wasted much time at 



CHAP. Y.] 



THE ROMANS. 



463 



Alexandria, leaving the affairs of Syria and 
Asia Minor to get into a state of confusion, 
satisfying himself that by and by he would 
rouse himself to some great effort which 
would set all right. 

In the spring of the year 40 B.C. the news 
from both Syria and Italy compelled the 
warrior to break off the enchantment by 
which he was bound, and to look closely to 
his affairs. In Syria, the people, disgusted 
and exhausted by the successive exactions of 

: Cassius and Anthony, refused to bear them 
any longer. The people of Aradus kindled 
the flame of opposition, by openly resisting 
the collectors of tribute, which example was 
soon followed by others. They united them- 
selves with the Palmyrenes, and the princes 
whom Anthony had deposed, and called to 
the Parthians for aid. They gladly re- 
sponded to the call, and entered the country 

i in great numbers under the command of 
their king's son Pacorus, and of a Roman 
general (Labienus) who had belonged to the 
party of Pompey. The king with one divi- 
sion of the army took possession of Syria, 
while Labienus with another performed the 
same service elsewhere. Anthony was made 
perfectly acquainted with this when he 
reached Tyre ; but the news which he also 
received from Italy so much more nearly 
concerned hi3 personal prosperity, that he 
immediately embarked for that country. On 
his arrival, affairs between him and Octavius 
wore, for a time, a threatening aspect. But 
the opportune death of Anthony's wife 
Fulvia allowed an opening for intermarriages 
between Anthony, Octavius, and Lepidus, 

! and peace between the triumvirs was for a 
time restored. They then divided the Roman 
empire among themselves. Anthony re- 
ceived Syria and the East, Lepidus obtained 
Africa, and Octavius all the West. 40 B.C. 

Meanwhile the Parthians, having made 
themselves masters of Syria, as related, 
began to take part in the affairs of Palestine. 
Pacorus was induced by the offer of one 

j thousand talents in money, and five hundred 
women, to undertake to place Antigonus on 

\ the throne of Judea. To put this contract 
in execution he furnished a body of soldiers, 
under the command of his cup-bearer, who 



also bore the name of Pacorus, to assist the 
operations of Antigonus. The united force 
found no effectual resistance until it reached 
Jerusalem, where the struggle was protracted 
without any decisive results. But at length 
it was agreed between the real belligerents 
to admit the Parthian commander within the 
city, to act as umpire between them. Pha- 
sael (the governor of Jerusalem) invited him 
to his own house, and allowed himself to be 
persuaded that the best course that could be 
taken would be for him and Hyrcanus to go 
and submit the matter in dispute to the 
arbitration of Barzapharnes, the Parthian 
governor of Syria. They went, notwith- 
standing the dissuasions of the less confiding 
Herod. Barzapharnes treated them with 
great attention and respect, until he sup- 
posed that sufficient time had elapsed to 
enable Pacorus to secure Herod at Jeru- 
salem, when he immediately put them in 
chains, and shut them up in prison. But 
Herod, suspecting the treachery of the Par- 
thians, withdrew with his family by night 
from Jerusalem, and repaired to the strong 
fortress of Massada, situated upon a high 
mountain west of the Dead Sea. On finding 
that Herod had escaped, the Parthians plun- 
dered the country, made Antigonus king 
according to their contract, and departed, 
leaving Hyrcanus and Phasael in his hands. 
Phasael, feeling assured that he was doomed 
to death, dashed out his brains against his 
prison walls. The life of his aged uncle was 
spared by the nephew ; but he cut off his 
ears to disqualify him from ever again acting 
as high-priest, and thus mutilated, sent him 
back to the safe keeping of the Parthians, 
who sent him to Seleucia on the Tigris. 

In this seemingly desperate state of his 
affairs, for to the great body of the Jews 
themselves Antigonus appears to have been 
more acceptable than he, Herod repaired to 
Egypt, and took ship at Alexandria for 
Rome. He was warmly welcomed by An- 
thony, by whom he was introduced to Octa- 
vius, who was induced to notice him favour- 
ably by the report of the very great services 
which Antipater had rendered to his grand- 
uncle (and adoptive father) Caesar, in the 
Egyptian expedition. The object of Herod's 



464 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



journey was to induce the Romans to raise 
to the throne of Judea Aristobulus, the 
brother of his espoused Miriamne. This 
Aristobulus was the son of Alexandra, the 
daughter of Hyrcanus, by Alexander the 
eldest son of Aristobulus, so that he seemed 
to unite in his person the claims of both 
branches of the Asamonean family. For 
himself, Herod purposed to govern the 
country under Aristobulus, as his father had 
governed it under Hyrcanus. But Anthony 
suggested the startling idea of making Herod 
himself king of Judea ; and noticing the 
eagerness with which he grasped at the glit- 
tering bait, he undertook, on the promise of 
a sum of money, to secure this object for 
him. He easily induced Octavius to concur 
with him; and their joint representations 
secured the appointment from the senate. 
Accordingly, during the consulship of De- 
metrius Calvinus and Asinius Pollio, in the 
one hundred and eighty-fourth Olympiad, in 
the year 40 B.C., the man who had a few 
weeks before been on the point of destroying 
himself from sheer despair of his fortunes, 
was conducted to the Capitol between the 
two foremost men in the world, Anthony and 
Octavius, and there consecrated king, with 
idolatrous sacrifices. All this was so soon 
accomplished, that Herod departed from 
Rome seven days after his arrival, and landed 
at Ptolemais only three months after his 
flight from Jerusalem. If the Parthians 
had still been in possession of Syria, it would 
have availed him little to have been made a 
king at Rome ; but by the time of his return 
they had already been driven out of Syria 
by the Romans, and had withdrawn beyond 
the Euphrates. 

Herod diligently applied himself to the 
collecting such a force as might enable him 
to relieve the friends he had left in Massada, 
who had all the while been closely besieged 
by Antigonus, and were at one time reduced 
to such extremities for want of water, that 
they had fully intended to surrender the next 
day, when an abundant fall of rain during 
the intervening night filled all the cisterns 
and enabled them to hold out until Herod 
came to their relief. 

Three years elapsed before Herod can be 



said to have obtained possession of the throne 
which the Romans had given to him. The 
assistance which the Romans themselves ren- 
dered is of questionable value, as at first the 
generals appointed to assist him would only 
act just as money induced them; and under 
pretence that the forces wanted provisions, 
ravaged the country in such a manner as 
was well calculated to render his cause 
odious to the J ews. One good service to the 
land was performed in the extirpation of the 
numerous bands of robbers which infested 
Galilee, dwelling chiefly in the caverns of 
the hill country, and which were so numer- 
ous as sometimes to give battle to the troops 
in the open field. They were, however, pur- 
sued with fire and sword in all their difficult 
retreats, and after great numbers had been 
slain, the rest sought refuge beyond Jordan. 

The arrival of Anthony in Syria enabled 
Herod to obtain more efficient assistance 
than before ; and after having subdued the 
open country, he with his Roman auxiliaries, 
sat down before Jerusalem. During this 
siege he consummated his marriage with 
Miriamne, to whom he had four years before 
been betrothed. He was not only passion- 
ately attached to this lady, but he hoped 
that the affinity thus contracted with the 
Asamonean family, which was still very 
popular among the Jews, would conciliate 
the people to his government. The city held 
out for six months, whereby the Romans 
were so greatly exasperated that when at 
last' (37 b.c.) they took it by storm, they 
plundered the town and massacred the inha- 
bitants without mercy. Herod complained 
that they were going to make him king of a 
desert ; and paid down a large sum of money 
to induce them to desist. Antigonus sur- 
rendered himself in rather a cowardly man- 
ner to the Roman general (Sosius), and, 
throwing himself at his feet, besought his 
clemency with so much abjectness, that the 
Roman repelled him with contempt, address- 
ing him by the name of Ariigona, as if un- 
worthy a man's name. He sent him to An- 
thony, who at first intended to reserve him 
for his triumph ; but being assured by Herod 
that while Antigonus lived the Jews gene- 
rally would not acknowledge himself as king, 



CHAP. T.] 

or cease to raise disturbances on his behalf, 
and this representation being backed by a 
sum of money, Anthony put him to death at 
Antioch, by the rods and the axe of the 
lie tor — an indignity which the Romans had 
never before inflicted upon a crowned head. 
Thus ignominiously ended the dynasty of 
the Asamoneans, one hundred and twenty- 
! six years after its glorious commencement. 
Herod commenced his reign by cutting 
off all the heads of the Asamonean party, 
not only to secure himself in the throne, but 
by the confiscation of their property to enrich 
his coffers, which were well nigh exhausted 
by his profuse expenditure, and by the rapa- 
city of the Romans. In this process all the 
members of the Sanhedrim perished, except 
Pollio and Sameas, which last, it will be re- 
membered, had predicted this result. The 
ground on which they were spared was, that 
they alone had counselled submission to the 
course of events, by surrendering the city to 
Herod; whereas the others were constantly 
encouraging each other and the citizens in 
the now vain expectation that Jehovah 
would, as of old, interpose for the deliver- 
ance of his temple *. 

* This Pollio and Sameas of Josephus are the famous 
Hillel and Shammai of the Rabbinical writers— two of the 
most eminent of the ancient doctors of the nation. Hillel 
was of the royal line of David, being descended from 
Shephatiah, David's son by Abital (1 Chron. iii. 3.) He 
was bom in Babylonia, and came to Jerusalem in the for- 
tieth year ef his age ; and for his eminence in the study of 
i the law, he was appointed president of the Sanhedrim, 
forty years after, in the eightieth year of his age, and 
held that high station for forty years more ; and it con- 
tinued in his family to the tenth generation. He was suc- 
ceeded by Simeon (supposed to be the same who took 
Christ in his arms when he was presented in the temple. 
Luke ii. 23 — 35.) His son Gamaliel was president of the 
Sanhedrim when Peter and the Apostles were summoned 
before them (Acts v. 34) ; " at whose feet " the Apostle 
Paul was " brought up," or educated, in the sect and dis- 
cipline of the Pharisees (Acts xxiii. 3). He lived until 
within eighteen years of the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
in the Jewish writings is distinguished by the title of Ga- 
maliel the Old. He was succeeded by Simeon II., who 
perished in the destruction of Jerusalem. His son was 
Gamaliel II., and his again Simeon III. He was succeeded 
by his son, the celebrated R. Judah Hakkadosh, or " the 
holy," who committed the Traditional Law to writing, in 
the Mishna. His son and successor was Gamaliel III.; 
. after him Judah Gemaricus; after him Hillel II., the in- 
genious compiler of the present Jewish Calendar, 358 a.d. 
Shammai had been a disciple of Hillel, and approached 
1 the nearest to him in learning and eminence of all the 
Mishnical doctors. He was vice-president of the Sanhe- 
drim, and disagreed in several points with his master. 
Hillel was of a mild and conciliatory temper, but Shammai 



OMANS. 465 

Herod, sensible that the Jews would not 
tolerate his own assumption of the high- 
priesthood in the room of Antigonus, de- 
signed to render that office politically insig- 
nificant, and therefore appointed to it Ananel 
of Babylon, an obscure priest, although de- 
scended from the ancient high-priests, and 
who was entirely without influence or con- 
nections to render him dangerous (36 B.C.). 
This appointment occasioned confusion in 
his own family ; for Mariamne his wife, and 
Alexandra her mother, took umbrage at the 
exclusion of her brother Aristobulus — the 
same youth for whose brows he had originally 
designed the diadem which he had himself 
been induced to assume. Mariamne was 
constantly harassing him on the subject; 
and her mother, Alexandra, a woman of 
great spirit, went much further, for she com- 
plained to Cleopatra queen of Egypt by 
letter, and had begun to engage the interest 
of Anthony himself in the matter, when 
Herod saw that it was necessary to his do- 
mestic peace and public safety that he should 
depose Ananel and promote Aristobulus to 
his office, who was then but seventeen years 
of age. He was, however, so seriously dis- 
pleased at the bold step which Alexandra 
had taken that he ordered her to be confined 
in her own palace, and placed around her 
some of his confidential servants to watch 
all her movements. She wrote to Cleopatra, 
complaining of this treatment, and in reply 
was advised to make her escape to Egypt. 
Accordingly, she arranged that herself and 
Aristobulus should be placed in two coffins, 
and carried by attached servants to the sea- 
coast, where a ship was waiting to receive 
them. But their flight was intercepted by 
Herod, whom, however, the fear of Cleopatra 
prevented from treating them with harsh- 
ness. He, however, secretly resolved to put 
Aristobulus out of the way, as a person 
whose influence he had great reason to 
dread. This intention was strengthened 
when he perceived how dangerously the dis- 

of an angry and fierce spirit. Hence proceeded violent 
disputes and contests between the two schools, which at 
length ended in bloodshed. Persons acquainted with the 
matters in controversy between the schools of Hillel and 
Shammai will find various marked allusions to them in 
the Goipels, and, although less frequently, in the Epistles. 



THE R 



H II 



466 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK Y i 



charge of his functions brought under the 
admiring notice of the Jews this beautiful 
fragment of the Maccabean race, in which 
they were delighted to trace out the noble 
qualities and lineaments by which that race 
had been distinguished. At the Feast of 
Tabernacles, Aristobulus officiated at the 
altar in the splendid robes of the high-priest, 
which set off to such advantage the angelic 
grace and beauty of his youthful person, that 
the Jews could not contain themselves, but 
gave vent to the most lively demonstrations 
of their admiration and love. This sealed 
his doom. Soon after, Herod engaged Aristo- 
bulus, with suitable companions of his own 
age, in a variety of sports and entertain- 
ments at Jericho. Among other things they 
bathed in a lake, where the young men kept 
immersing xiristobulus, as if in sport, until 
he was drowned. Loud were the lamenta- 
tions of Herod at this most unhappy " acci- 
dent." By these, and by the grand funeral 
with which he honoured the remains of Aris- 
tobulus, and by the trophies with which he 
surcharged his tomb, he sought to disguise 
from the people the real character of this 
transaction. But they were not deceived. 
The deed inspired the whole nation with 
hatred and horror, which even his own family 
shared. As to Alexandra, her emotions were 
so overpowering that only the hope of ven- 
geance enabled her to live. 

Old Hyrcanus was at this time in Jeru- 
salem. He had been, and might have re- 
mained, very happily situated at Seleucia, 
where he was treated by the Jews in that 
quarter, loho were more numerous and more 
wealthy than those of Judea, as their king 
and high-priest, in which point of view he 
was also considered and respected by the 
Parthian king. But when the fears and sus- 
picions of Herod extended even to him, and, 
desiring to get him into his own power, he 
sent and invited him to come and spend the 
evening of his days in his own laud and with 
his own family, and engaged the Parthian 
king to permit him to do so, Hyrcanus, who 
liked Herod, and had great confidence in his 
gratitude, could not be dissuaded by the 
earnest remonstrances and entreaties of his 
eastern friends, but returned to Jerusalem, 



where he was well received, and, until 
more convenient season, treated by Hei 
with attention and respect. 

Anthony was now again in Syria, and \ 
his arrival had invited Cleopatra to join h 
at Laodicea. Alexandra again applied 
Cleopatra; and she took much interest in 
the matter — not from any strong natural 
feelings — for she had herself committed 
crimes as great, but in the hope of inducing 
Anthony to add Judea to her dominions if 
Herod were disgraced. She therefore brought 
the affair under the notice of Anthony ; and 
as he could not but remember that Herod 
had originally sought for the murdered 
youth the crown he now wore himself, he 
was induced to summon him to Laodicea to 
answer for his conduct. Herod was obliged 
to obey, and was not without anxiety for the 
result. He however took care so to pro- 
pitiate Anthony beforehand by the profusion 
of his gifts, that on his arrival he was imme- 
diately acquitted, and the avarice of Cleo- 
patra was in some degree appeased by the 
assignment of Coele-Syria to her, in lieu of 
Judea, of which she had always been, and 
soon again became covetous, 34 B.C. 

Before his departure from Jerusalem, 
Herod, uncertain of the result, had left pri- 
vate instructions with his uncle Joseph (who 
had married his sister Salome) to put Ma- 
riamne to death in case he was condemned, 
for he knew that Anthony had heard much 
of her extreme beauty, and feared that he 
might take her to himself, after his death 
Joseph had the great imprudence to divulge 
this secret to Mariamne herself, representing 
it, however, as resulting from the excess of 
her husband's love to her. But she rather 
regarded it as a proof of so savage a nature, 
that she conceived an unconquerable repug- 
nance towards him. Soon after a rumour 
came that he had been put to death by An- 
thony; on which Alexandra, who was now 
also acquainted with the barbarous orders 
left with Joseph, was preparing to seek pro- 
tection with the Roman legion stationed in 
the city, when letters from Herod, announc- 
ing his acquittal and speedy return, induced 
Joseph and Salome to relinquish their design 
The firebrand of the family was Salome, tl* 



J CHAP. V.] 

sister of Herod, and she failed not to apprise 
her brother of this intention, as well as to 
insinuate that too close an intimacy had sub- 
sisted between Mariamne and Joseph. Sa- 
[ lome had been, it seems, provoked to hatred 
of this high-born lady by the hauteur with 
which she had been looked down upon and 
treated as an inferior by her. Although 
struck with jealousy, the king allowed his 
deep love for Mariamne to subdue him, when 
all her beauty shone once more upcn him. 
He could only bring himself to question her 
gently, and was satisfied from her answers, 
and from the conscious innocence of her 
manner, that she had been maligned. After- 
wards, while assuring her of the sincerity 
and ardour of his love towards her, she 
tauntingly reminded him of the proof of 
that which he had given in his orders to 
Joseph. This most imprudent disclosure 
rekindled all the jealousy of Herod. Con- 
vinced that the charge which he had heard 
was true, he flung her from his arms ; Joseph 
he ordered to be put to death, without ad- 
mitting him to his presence; and although 
his love for Mariamne at this time restrained 
his rage against her, he put her mother 
Alexandra into custody, as the cause of all 
these evils. 

The disgraceful history of Anthony in 
Egypt is familiar to the reader; and it is 
only needful to advert to one or two points 
in which Herod and Palestine were more or 
less involved. 

In 33 b.c. Jerusalem was "honoured" 
with a visit from Cleopatra, on her return 
from the banks of the Euphrates, whither 
she had accompanied Anthony on his Arme- 
nian expedition. Before this she had suc- 
ceeded in persuading Anthony, although 
he steadily refused wholly to sacrifice Herod 
to her ambition, to give her the fertile ter- 
ritories around Jericho, the celebrated balsam 
afforded by which, together with the palm- 
trees in which it abounded, furnished a con- 
siderable revenue, the deprivation of which 

' could not but have given great offence to 
Herod. The means which this abandoned 
woman used, during her stay at Jerusalem, 
to bring the king under the spell of those 

' fascinations for which, more than for her 



467 

beauty, she was celebrated, added, in his 
mind, disgust and contempt to the sense of 
wrong ; and although he received and enter- 
tained her with the most sedulous attention 
and apparent respect, he had it seriously in 
consideration whether, seeing she was wholly 
in his power, he could safely compass the 
death of one who had more than once en- 
deavoured to accomplish his own. The dread 
of Anthony's vengeance deterred him, and 
he conducted the queen with honour to the 
frontiers of her own kingdom, after having 
endeavoured to propitiate her cupidity by 
ample gifts. But nothing could satiate her 
thirst for gain and aggrandisement, and her 
plots to gain possession of Judea were con- 
tinued, and could hardly have been defeated 
by a less accomplished master in her own 
arts than Herod "the Great." One time 
she engaged Anthony to commit to him a 
hazardous war on her account with the Ara- 
bian king reigning in Petra, calculating that 
the death of either of them would enable 
her to appropriate his dominions. Herod 
gained one battle ; but he lost another 
through the defection of the Egyptian 
general at a critical moment of the conflict. 
Herod was, however, ultimately successful, 
and won great honour by a signal and effec- 
tive victory, which brought the Arabians of 
Seir under his dominion. 

The same year (31 B.C.) had opened with 
an earthquake so tremendous as had never 
before been known in Judea: it is said that 
not fewer than thirty thousand persons were 
either swallowed up in the chasms which 
opened in the earth, or destroyed by the fall 
of their houses. The confusion and loss 
which this calamity occasioned greatly 
troubled the king, and not long after he 
found (as far as his own interests were con- 
cerned) a more serious matter of anxiety in 
the result of the battle of Actium (Sept. 
2nd, 31 b.c), when Octavius obtained a de- . 
cided victory over Anthony, who fled to 
Egypt, as his last retreat. Herod did not 
exhibit any blameworthy alacrity in aban- 
doning the patron of his fortunes. He sent 
by a special messenger to exhort him to put 
to immediate death the woman who had 
been his ruin, seize her treasures and king- 

— — 

h n 2 



THE ROMANS. 



468 



THE BIBLE 



HISTORY. 



[BOOK V. 



dom, and thus obtain means of raising 
another army, with which either once more 
to contend for empire, or at least to secure a 
more advantageous peace than he could 
otherwise expect. But finding that Anthony 
paid no heed to this proposal, and neglected 
his own offers of service, he thought it was 
high time to take care of himself, by de- 
taching his fortunes from one whose utter 
ruin he saw to be inevitable. Therefore, 
when Octavius early in 30 B.C. had come to 
Rhodes, on his way to Egypt, he went thither 
to him. 

But before his departure he made such 
arrangements as showed, after his own pecu- 
liar manner, the sense he entertained of the 
serious importance of the present contin- 
gencies. He placed his mother, sister, wives, 
and children in the strong fortress of Mas- 
sada, under the care of his brother Pheroras. 
But seeing that Mariamne and her mother 
Alexandra could not agree with his mother 
and sister, he placed them separately in the 
fortress of Alexandrium, under the care 
of a trusty Idumean named Sohemus, with 
secret orders to put them both to death if 
Octavius should treat him harshly ; and that, 
in concurrence with Pheroras, he should en- 
deavour to secure the crown for his children. 
And, fearful that the existence and presence 
of Hyrcanus might suggest the obvious course 
of deposing himself and restoring the ori- 
ginal occupant of the throne, he was glad of 
the opportunity of putting him to death, 
with the faint show of justice which might 
be derived from the detected design of the 
old man (instigated by his daughter Alex- 
andra) to make his escape to the Arabian 
king Malchus, the most active of Herod's 
foreign enemies, and the son of that king 
Aretas who had formerly invaded J udea for 
the purpose of restoring Hyrcanus to the 
throne which his brother had usurped. Hyr- 
canus was eighty years of age when he was 
thus made to experience the heartless ingra- 
titude of the man who owed life and all 
things to his favour. 

On his arrival at Rhodes, Herod conducted 
himself with the tact of no common man. 
When admitted to an audience, he frankly 
acknowledged all he had done for Anthony, 



and all he would still have done had his ser- 
vices been accepted. He even stated the 
last counsel which he had given to that in- 
fatuated man; and having thus enabled 
Octavius to judge how faithful he was to his 
friends, he offered to him that friendship 
which the conduct of Anthony left him free 
to offer. Octavius was charmed by this 
manly frankness ; and, mindful of Antipater's 
services to Julius Csesar, and of the part 
which he had himself taken in placing 
Herod on the throne, his overtures were 
received with pleasure, and he was directed 
again to take up and wear on his head the 
diadem which he had laid aside when he 
entered the presence. By this significant 
intimation he was confirmed in his kingdom ; 
and then and after he was treated with a 
degree of consideration not usually paid to 
tributary kings. 

Meanwhile Mariamne had, by her address, 
managed to extract from Sohemus the ac- 
knowledgment of the last directions con- 
cerning her which he had received from 
Herod. The consequence was that, although 
she concealed her knowledge of the fact, she 
received him on his return with coldness and 
dislike, which offended him highly; and, 
presuming on the depth of his affection for 
her, she continued long to maintain a degree 
of haughtiness and reserve which greatly 
aggravated his displeasure. After Herod 
had been fluctuating for a whole year be- 
tween love and resentment, Mariamne one 
day brought matters to a crisis by her 
pointed refusal to receive his love, and by 
her upbraiding him with the murder of her 
grandfather and brother. Enraged beyond 
further endurance, Herod immediately or- 
dered her confidential eunuch to be put to 
the torture, that he might discover the 
cause of her altered conduct ; but the tor- 
tured wretch could only say that it probably 
arose from some communication which So- 
hemus had made to her. This hint sufficed ; 
as he concluded that Sohemus must have 
been too intimate with her, or that he would 
not have revealed the secret with which he 
had been entrusted. Sohemus was immedi- 
ately seized and put to death; Mariamne 
herself was then accused by Herod of adul- 



CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



469 



tery before judges of his own selection, by 
whom she was condemned, but with a con- 
viction that their sentence of death would 
not be executed. Neither would it, pro- 
bably, but for the intervention of Cypres, 
the mother of Herod, and Salome his 
sister, who, fearing he might relent, sug- 
gested that by delay occasion for a po- 
pular commotion in her favour might be 
given. She was therefore led to immediate 
execution, and met her death with the firm- 
ness which became her race, although as- 
sailed on the way by the violent and inde- 
cent reproaches of her own mother, Alex- 
andra, who now began to be seriously alarmed 
for her own safety. She, however, did not 
long escape ; for, when Herod fell sick the 
next year (28 B.C.) from the poignancy of his 
remorse and anguish at the loss of Mariamne, 
she laid a plot for seizing the government ; 
but it was disclosed to Herod by the officers 
whose fidelity she endeavoured to corrupt, and 
he instantly ordered her to be put to death. 

We must return to an earlier year, to 
notice that Octavius passed through Syria 
on his way to Egypt, and that Herod went 
to meet him at Ptolemais, where he enter- 
tained him and his army with the most pro- 
fuse magnificence. Besides this he presented 




[Cleopatra.] 



the emperor with eight hundred talents, and 
furnished large supplies of bread, wine, and 
other provisions, for the march through the 
desert, where the army might have been 
much distressed for the want of such neces- 
saries. He accompanied the army himself 
through the desert to Pelusium. On the 
return of Octavius the same way, after the 
death of Anthony and Cleopatra, and the 
reduction of Egypt to the condition of a 
Roman province, he was received and enter- 



tained with the same truly royal liberality 
and magnificence, by which he was so gra- 
tified that, in return, he presented Herod 
with the four thousand Gauls who had 
formed the body-guard of Cleopatra, and 
also restored to him the districts and towns 
of which the principality had been divested 
by Pompey and Anthony. 

In 27 b.c, four years after the battle of 
Actium, Octavius received from the flattery 
of the senate the name — or rather the title 
which became a name — of Augustus, and 




[Augustus.] 



with it all the powers of the state. That he 
might not, however, seem to assume all the 
authority to himself, he divided the empire 
into two parts ; the quiet and peaceable por- 
tions he assigned to the senate, to be go- 
verned by consular and praetorian officers; 
these were called senatorial; but the turbu- 
lent and insecure provinces which lay on the 
outskirts of the empire, he reserved for him- 
self; these were called imperial, and were 
governed by presidents and procurators. This 
was one of the strokes of deep statesmanship 
which distinguish the history of Augustus 
Caesar, for under the appearance of leaving 
to the senate the most settled and easily 
governed provinces, he secured in his own 
hands the whole military power of the 
empire, which was necessarily stationed in 
the comparatively unsettled imperial pro- 
vinces to retain them in subjection — such as 
Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, and Cyprus, 
in the east, and Spain, in the west. 

In the year 25 B.C. Herod found an oppor- 
tunity of cutting off the last branch of the 
Asamonean race. His turbulent sister Sa- 



47-0 

lome, having fallen out with her second 
husband Costabarus, the governor of Idumea 
and Gaza, she took the liberty of sending 
him a bill of divorce, in conformity with the 
Roman customs, but contrary to the Mo- 
saical law and usage, which confined that 
privilege to her husband*; and she then 
returned to her brother, before whom she 
cunningly ascribed her conduct to the fact 
that Costabarus, in conjunction with some 
chiefs of the Asamonean party, had entered 
into a conspiracy against him. In proof of 
this, she stated that he kept in concealment 
the sons of Babas, whom Herod had, at the 
taking of Jerusalem, entrusted to him to be 
destroyed. The sons of Babas were found in 
the retreat indicated by Salome, and put to 
death ; and, taking all the rest for granted, 
the king ordered Costabarus and his alleged 
associates to be immediately executed. 

The Asamonean family being now extir- 
pated root and branch, and no person being 
in existence whose claims to the throne could 
be considered superior to his own, Herod 
ventured to manifest a greater disregard for 
the law of Moses, and more attachment to 
heathenish customs than he had previously 
deemed safe. He began by abolishing some 
of the ceremonies which the former required, 
and by introducing not a few of the latter. 
He then proceeded to build a magnificent 
theatre in the city, and a spacious amphi- 
theatre in the suburbs, where he instituted 
public games, which were celebrated every 
fifth year in honour of Augustus. In order 
to draw the larger concourse on these occa- 
sions, proclamation of the approaching games 
was made, not only in his own dominions, but 
in neighbouring provinces and distant king- 
doms. Gladiators, wrestlers, and musicians 
were invited from all parts of the world, and 
prizes of great value were proposed to the 
victors. These games, and more especially 
the combats between men and wild beasts, 
were highly displeasing to the Jews; who 
also viewed with a jealous eye the trophies 
with which the places of public entertain- 
ment were adorned, regarding them as 
coming within the interdiction of idolatrous 
images by the Mosaical law. In vain did 

* Deut. xxiv. 1, 2, &e. ; Matt. v. 31 ; xix. /. 



[book y, ! 

1 

Herod endeavour to overcome their dislike. 
Connected with other causes of discontent, 
old and new, it increased daily, and at last 
grew to such a height that ten of the most 
zealous malcontents, including onje blind 
man, formed a conspiracy, and assembled, 
with daggers concealed under their gar- 
ments, for the purpose of assassinating Herod 
when he entered the theatre. They had 
brought their minds to a state of indifference 
to the result ; for they were persuaded that 
if they failed, their death could not but 
render the tyrant more odious to the people, 
and thus equally work out the object they 
sought. Nor were they quite mistaken. 
Their design was discovered ; and they were 
put to death with the most cruel tortures. 
But when the mob indicated their view of 
the matter — their hatred of himself, and 
sympathy with the intended assassins — by 
literally tearing the informer in pieces, and 
throwing his flesh to the dogs, Herod was 
exasperated to the uttermost. By torture, 
he compelled some women to name the prin- 
cipal persons who were concerned in this 
transaction, all of whom were hurried off to 
instant death together with their innocent 
families. This crowning act of savageness 
rendered the tyrant so perfectly detestable 
to his subjects, that he began very seriously 
to contemplate the possibility of a general 
revolt, and to take his measures accordingly. 
He built new fortresses and fortified towns 
throughout the land, and strengthened those 
that previously existed. In this he did more 
than the original inducement required ; for 
Herod was a man of taste, and had quite a 
passion for building and improvements, so 
that in the course of his long reign the 
country assumed a greatly improved appear- 
ance, through the number of fine towns and 
magnificent public works and buildings 
which he erected. In this respect there had 
been no king like him since Solomon ; and if 
he could have reigned in peace, if domestic 
troubles, opposition from his subjects, and 
the connection with the Romans, had not 
called into active operation all the darker 
features of his character, it is easy to con- 
ceive that his reign might have been very 
happy and glorious. 



THE BIBLE IIISTOilY. 



} CHAP. V.] 

I _ 

I He rebuilt Samaria, or rather completed 
the rebuilding of it which Gabinius had 
begun. His attention seems to have been 
drawn to its excellent site and strong mili- 
tary position; and from the magnificent scale 
on which it was restored, we conceive that he 
contemplated the possibility of withdrawing 
his court to it, in the very likely contingency 
of being unable to maintain himself at J eru- 
salem. He gave the completed city the name 
of Sebaste, the name, in Greek, of his great 
patron Augustus. He also built Gaba in Ga- 
lilee, and Heshbon in Perea; besides many 
others which he called by the names of the 
different members of his own family, as — 
Antipatris, from the name of his father Anti- 
( pater; Cypron, near Jericho, after his mother 
Cypros (who was descended from an Arabian 
family, although born at Ascalon in Pales- 
tine); and Pha?aelis, in the plains of Jericho, 
after his brother Phasael. In most of these 
cities he planted colonies of his foreign 
soldiers to hold the country in subjection. 

To extend his fame Herod even built 
numerous splendid edifices, and made large 
improvements in cities beyond the limits of 
his own dominion — such as gymnasiums at 
Ptolemais, Tripolis, and Damascus ; the city 
walls at Bibulus ; porticoes, or covered walls 
at Tyre, Beyrutus, and Antioch; bazaars and 
theatres at Zidon and Damascus; an aque- 
duct at Laodicea on the sea; and baths, re- 
servoirs, and porticoes at Ascalon. He also 
made groves in several cities; to others he 
made rich presents, or furnished endowments 
for the support of their games; and by such 
means his fame was widely spread in the 
Roman empire. 

At Jerusalem Herod built himself a 
splendid palace, on Mount Zion, the site 
of the original fortress of Jebus, and of 
the citadel which had so much annoyed 
the Jews during the Maccabean wars. It 
was in the Grecian style of architecture, 
and two large and sumptuous apartments 
in it Herod named Csesareum, in honour 
of the emperor, and Agrippeum, after his 
favourite Agrippa. 

We receive a better idea of the largeness 
of Herod's views, however, by his building 
the town and forming the harbaai at what 



471 

he named Caesarea. The site had formerly 
been marked by a castle called Strato's tower, 
on the coast between Dora and Joppa. Here 
he made the most convenient and safest port 
to be found on all the coast of Phoenicia and 
Palestine by running out a vast semi-circular 
mole or breakwater, of great depth and ex- 
tent, into the sea, so as to form a spacious 
and secure harbour against the stormy winds 
from the south and west, leaving only an 
entrance into it from the north. This soon 
became a noted point of departure from 
and entrance into Palestine, and as such is 
often mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. 
It also acquired a new importance as the 
seat of government, after Judea became an 
imperial province, Caesarea being then the 
usual residence of the procurator. 

In the year 22 B.C. the want of the usual 
rains in Syria and Palestine produced a severe 
famine, which was followed by a pestilence 
that carried off great multitudes of the people. 
Herod behaved nobly on this occasion. He 
exhausted his treasury, and even the silver 
plate of his table, in purchasing provisions 
from Egypt, and in buying wool for clothing, 
as most of the sheep of the country had been 
slaughtered in the dearth. This bounty was 
not confined to his own dominions, but ex- 
tended to the neighbouring Syrians. By this 
conduct so much of gratitude and kind feeling 
towards him was produced, as only the con- 
tinued and growing tyranny of his subsequent 
reign could obliterate. 

The next year Herod contracted a marriage 
with another Mariamne, the daughter of the 
priest Simon. To pave the way for this al- 
liance the king removed the existing high- 
priest, Jesus, the son of Phabet, and invested 
the father of Mariamne with that once high 
office. Herod next began to build a castle, 
which he called Herodium, on a small round 
hill, near the place where he repulsed the 
Parthians, under the cupbearer Pacorus, when 
they pursued him on his flight from Jerusalem. 
The situation and the protection which the 
castle offered were so inviting that numbers 
of opulent people began to build themselves 
houses around, so that in a short time the 
spot was occupied by a fair city. 

About this time Herod might be deemed 



THE ROMANS. 



472 



THE BIBLE HISTOllY. 



[B003 



to have attained the summit of all his wishes. 
Strong in the favour of the emperor, he was 
feared, if not loved, by the people under his 
rule, and respected by the Roman governors, 
and by the neighbouring princes and kings. 
Of the favour and confidence of Augustus he 
received proofs which were of high value to 
him. As a reward for his services in clear- 
ing the country of robbers, the valuable dis- 
tricts of Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Batanea, 
beyond J ordan, were added to his dominion ; 
and, what was perhaps more for his personal 
influence and honour, he was soon after named 
the emperor's procurator in Syria, and orders 
were given to the governor of that great 
province to undertake nothing of importance 
without his knowledge and advice. Herod 
also procured from the emperor the dignity 
of a tetrarch for his only surviving brother, 
Pheroras ; for Herod himself had given him 
a territory in Perea, beyond Jordan, with a 
revenue of one hundred talents, in order that 
he might live in a style suitable to his birth, 
without being dependent on the king's suc- 
cessor. As some acknowledgment for all these 
favours Herod built a temple of white marble 
at Paneas (Banias, the sources of the Jordan), 
and dedicated it to Augustus. But this act, 
and others of a similar character, were so 
highly offensive to the Jews that, to pacify 
them, Herod was obliged to remit a portion 
of their tribute. 

It seems likely that the reflections made 
upon his conduct, in building heathen tem- 
ples, first drew his attention to the condition 
of J ehovah's temple at Jerusalem, which, in 
the lapse of time, had gone much out of re- 
pair, and had sustained great damage during 
the civil wars. He was then led to form the 
bold design of pulling it down, and rebuild- 
ing it entirely on a more magnificent scale. 
To this he was induced, not only from the 
magnificence of his ideas, his love of building, 
and the desire of fame, but also to conciliate 
the good opinion of his discontented subjects, 
and create a new interest in the continuance 
of his life and welfare. 

Herod made his proposal in a general 
assembly of the people at Jerusalem, pro- 
bably at the passover, in the year 19 B.C., 
the eighteenth of his reign. The people 



were much startled by the offer. They re- 
cognised the grandeur of the undertaking, 
and the need and benefit of it ; but they 
were fearful that after he had taken down 
the old building he might be unable or un- 
willing to build the new. To meet this ob- 
jection Herod undertook not to demolish the 
old temple until all the materials required 
for the new one were collected on the spot ; 
and on these terms his offer was accepted, 
with as much satisfaction as the Jews were 
capable of deriving from any of his acts. 
Herod kept his word. A thousand carts 
were speedily at work in drawing stones 
and materials, ten thousand of the most 
skilful workmen were brought together, and 
a thousand priests were so far instructed 
in masonry and carpentry as might enable 
them to expedite and superintend the work. 
After two years had been spent in these pre- 
parations the old temple was pulled down, 
and the new one commenced in the year 17 
b.c. And with such vigour was the work 
carried on that the Sanctuary, or, in effect, 
the proper temple, was finished in a year 
and a half, and the rest of the temple, con- 
taining the outer buildings, colonnades, and 
porticoes, in eight years more, so as to be 
then fit for divine service, according to the 
king's intention, 7 B.C. But the expense of 
finishing and adorning the whole continued 
to be long after carried on from the sacred 
treasury, until the fatal government of Gessius 
Floras, in the year 62 a.d. Hence during the 
ministry of Christ (28 a.d.) the Jews said to 
him, "Forty and six years was this temple in 
building, and wilt thou rear it up in three 
days?" (John ii. 20.) 

By the first Mariamne Herod had two sons, 
Alexander and Aristobulus, whom he sent to 
be educated at Rome, where they remained 
three years, under the immediate inspection 
of Augustus, who had kindly lodged them in 
his own palace. Two years after the founda- 
tion of the temple Herod went to Rome him- 
self, to pay his respects to the emperor, and 
take back to Judea his sons, whose education 
was nof complete. He was received with 
unusual friendliness by Augustus, and was 
entertained with much distinction during 
his stay. Soon after his return he married 



CHAP. T.] 



THE ffcOMANS. 



473 



the elder of the brothers to Glaphyra, the 
daughter of Arekelaus, king of Cappadocia, 
and the younger to Berenice, the daughter 
of his own notorious sister, Salome. Now it 
happened that both the young men inherited 
a full share of the pride and hauteur of their 
mother Mariamne, and were disposed to look 

! down upon all the connections of their father. 
That they eyer entertained any designs 
against him is not probable; but it is very 
probable, from their conduct, that, apart from 
their respect for him, they deemed their right 
to the crown irrefragable, derived from their 
mother rather than from him, and, in point 
of fact, much greater than his own. By cor- 
rupting her own daughter, who was married 
to one of the brothers, Salome made herself 
acquainted with their more private senti- 
ments, and learned that their sympathies 
leaned all to the side of their murdered 
mother, and that in their own domestic 

{ circles they spoke with strong abhorrence 
of the authors of her undeserved and un- 
timely death, and lamented the various acts 
of cruelty of which their father had been 
guilty. This was enough to determine Sa- 
lome to accomplish their ruin, as she saw 
clearly that, if ever they possessed power, 
she was likely to suffer for the part she had 
taken in compassing the death of Mariamne. 
She was also envious of their popularity, 
for the very same feeling which inclined 
them to rest upon their connection with the 
Asamonean dynasty inclined the Jews to re- 
gard them with peculiar interest and favour 
as the last relics of that illustrious house. 
Salome, therefore, took every occasion of pre- 
judicing Herod against his sons, and of turn- 
ing his paternal love and pride into jealousy 
and dislike. To this end, indeed, little more 
was needed than to make known to him, with 
some exaggeration, the true state of their 
feelings. 

The first measure which Herod took to 
check the pride of the two brothers was, 
three years after his return (13 B.C.), to 
bring to court his eldest son, Antipater, 
whom he had by his first wife Doris, while 
he was in a private station, and whom he 
had divorced on his marriage with Mariamne. 
But this measure, intended to teach them 



wholesome caution, only operated in provok- 
ing Alexander and Aristobulus to greater 
discontent and more intemperate language 
than before. In fact, they had almost in- 
sensibly become the heads of the Asamonean 
party, still very powerful in the country, 
and were urged on by the necessities of that • 
position, and by the conviction that the po- 
pular feeling was entirely on their side. As 
to Antipater, he had all the ambition of his 
father, with all the artfulness of his aunt. 
Openly he seemed to advocate the cause of 
the brothers, and to extenuate their indis- 
cretions, while he took care to surround the 
king with persons who reported to him all 
their sayings with the most invidious aggra- 
vations. By this means the affection with 
which Herod had regarded the brothers, not 
only for their own noble qualities, but for 
their mother's sake, was alienated from them 
and fixed upon Antipater. Him the father at 
length recommended to Augustus as his suc- 
cessor, and obtained from him authority to 
leave the crown to him in the first instance, 
and afterwards to the sons of Mariamne, 

11 B.C. 

The curious reader will find in Josephus 
a full account of all the various plots which 
were laid by Antipater, assisted by his aunt 
Salome and his uncle Pheroras, to bring 
about the destruction of the young princes. 
This they at last effected by a false charge 
that they designed to poison their father. 
On this he brought them to trial before 
a council held at Beyrutus, at which the 
Roman governors Saturnius and Volumnius 
presided, and where Herod pleaded in per- 
son against his sons with such vehemence 
that he, with some difficulty, procured their 
condemnation, although nothing could be 
clearly proved against them but an inten- 
tion to withdraw to some foreign country, 
where they might live in peace. The time 
and the mode of putting the sentence into 
execution were left to the king's own discre- 
tion. This was not until he came to Sebaste, 
where, in a fit of rage, produced in the same 
manner and through the same agencies as 
his previous treatment of these unfortunate 
young men, he ordered them to be strangled, 
6 b.c. In these two unfortunate brothers the 



474 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



noble family of the Asamoneans may be said 
to have become utterly extinct. 

It was somewhat before this time that 
Herod, being greatly in want of money, 
bethought himself of opening the tomb of 
David, having probably heard the story of 
the treasure which the first Hyrcanus was 
reported to have found there. As might 
be expected, he discovered nothing but the 
royal ornaments with which the king had 
been buried. 

In the spring of the year 5 b.c. the birth 
of the great Harbinger, John the Baptist, 
announced the approach of One greater 
than he, whose sandal-thong he, thereafter, 
declared himself unworthy to unloose. 

At and for some time before the date to 
which we are now arrived the relations of 
Herod with Rome had become more unplea- 
sant than at any former period. Not long 
before he put Alexander and Aristobulus 
to death Herod had a quarrel with Obadas, 
king of Arabia, which led him to march some 
troops into that country, and to the defeat 
of the banded robbers, against whom chiefly 
he acted, and of a party of Arabs who came 
to their relief. This affair was reported to 
Augustus in such a manner as raised his 
wrath against Herod ; and attending only 
to the fact that Herod had marched a mili- 
tary force into Arabia, which Herod's friends 
could not deny, he, without inquiring into 
the provocation and circumstances, wrote to 
Herod a very severe letter ; the substance of 
which was, that he had hitherto treated him as 
a friend, but should henceforth treat him as a 
subject. Herod sent an embassy to clear him- 
self, but Augustus repeatedly refused to listen 
to them ; and so the king was obliged for a 
time to submit to all the injurious treatment 
which the emperor thought proper to inflict. 
The chief of these was the degrading his 
kingdom to a Roman province. For soon 
after Josephus incidentally mentions that 
"the whole nation took an oath of fidelity 
to Caesar, and to the king jointly, except 
six thousand of the Pharisees, who, through 
their hostility to the regal government, re- 
fused to take it, and were fined for their 
refusal by the king; but the wife of his 
brother Pheroras paid the fine for them." 



As this was shortly before the death of 
Pheroras himself, it coincides with the time 
of this decree for the enrolment of which 
St. Luke (ii. 1) makes mention ; and we may, 
therefore, certainly infer that the oath was 
administered at the same time, according to 
the usage of the Roman census, in which a 
return of persons' ages and properties was 
required to be made upon oath, under pe- 
nalty of the confiscation of the goods of the 
delinquents. And the reason for registering 
ages was that, among the Syrians, males from 
fourteen years of age and females from twelve, 
until their sixty-fifth year, were subject to 
a capitation or poll-tax by the Roman law. 
Thi3 tax was two drachma; a head, or half a 
stater, equal to fifteen pence of our money*. 

Cyrenius, a Roman senator and procurator, 
or collector of the emperor's revenue, was em- 
ployed to make the enrolment. This person, 
whom Tacitus calls Quirinus, and describes as 
"an active soldier and rigid commissioner," 
was well qualified for an employment so odious 
to Herod and to his subjects, and probably 
came to execute the decree with an armed 
force. By the wary policy of the Romans, to 
prevent insurrection as well as to expedite 
business, all were required to repair to their 
own cities. Even in Italy the consular edict 
commanded the Latin citizens not to be en- 
rolled at Rome, but all in their own cities. 
And this precaution was of course more ne- 
cessary in such turbulent provinces as Judea 
and Galilee f. 

The decree was peremptory, and admitted 
of no delay ; therefore, in the autumn of the 
year 5, of the popular era Before Christ J, 

* See the case of Christ, and Peter afterwards, where 
" a stater ," the amount for botJi, was procured by miracle. 
Matt. xvii. 24—27. 

t For this clear view of the somewhat perplexed subject 
of the Census alluded to by St. Luke, we are indebted to 
Dr. Hales, from whose excellent ' Analysis of Chronology' 
we have, indeed, obtained much and various aid in the 
present book of our history. 

t That the birth of Christ is thus given to the autumn 
of the year 5 before Christ, is an apparent anomaly, which 
may require a few words of explanation. The Era of the 
Birth of Christ was not in use until 532 a.d., in the time of 
Justinian, when it was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, a 
Scythian by birth, and a Roman abbot; and which only 
began to prevail in the West about the time of Charles 
Martel and Pope Gregory II., 730 a.d. It has long been 
agreed by all chronologers that Dionysius made a mistake 
in placing the birth of Christ some years too late; but the 
amount of the difference has been variously estimated, at 



CHAP. V.] 

a carpenter of Nazareth in Galilee, by name 
Joseph, journeyed with his wife Mary, al- 
though she was then large with child, to 
Bethlehem in Julea, that being their pa- 
ternal city, as they were both " of the race 
and lineage of David." They were not among 
the first comers, and the place was so thronged 
that they could not find room even in the 
lodging-rooms of the caravanserai of Bethle- 
hem, but were obliged to seek shelter in the 
stables of the same. Here the woman was 
taken in labour, and gave birth to a male 
child. That child, thus humbly born, was 
the long-promised "Desire of Nations," the 
"Saviour of the World" — JESUS CHRIST. 
Nor did he come sooner than he was expected. 
The Jews expected anxiously, and from day 
to day, the Great Deliverer, of whom their 
prophets had spoken; and the precise fore- 
calculations of the prophet Daniel had given 
them to know that the time of his coming 
was near. This indeed partly explains the 
uneasy relations between Herod and his 
subjects, and the distaste of the latter to 
the kingship which he had taken. For they 
wanted no king, until their king Messiah 
should come to take the throne of his father 
David, and lead them forth, conquering and 
to 'conquer, breaking the nations in pieces, as 
an iron rod breaks the vessels of the potter, 
and bringing all the Gentiles to their feet. 
Full of these magnificent ideas of their king 
Messiah, they failed to recognise the promised 
Deliverer in One who came to deliver them, 
not from the Romans, but from their sins ; 
whose kingdom was not to be of this world, 
and who was to reign, not over lands and 
territories, but in the hearts of men. 

Nor was he expected only by the Jews. 
He was the " Desire of Nations." There were 

two, three, four, five, or even eight years. The most 
general conclusion is that which is adopted in our Bibles, 
and which places the birth of Christ four years before the 
common era, or more probably a few months more, accord- 
ing to the conclusion of Hales, which we have deemed it 
proper to adopt. The grounds of this conclusion are 
largely and ably stated in the ' Analysis,' vol. i. p. 83—93. 

I As to the day, it appears that the 2oth of December was 
not fixed upon till the time of Constantine, in the fourth 
century, although there was an early tradition in its 
favour. It is probable that it really took place about or at 
the Feast of Tabernacles (say the autumnal equinox) of 
5 b c, or at the Passover (say the vernal equinox) of 4 b.c. 
The former is the opinion of Hales and others, and the 
latter of Archbishop Usher and our Bibles. 



475 

strong pulsations of the universal heart, in 
expectation of some great change, — of the 
advent of some distinguished personage who 
should bring in a new order of things of 
some kind or other, and who should work 
such deeds and establish such dominion as 
never before existed. It was even expected 
that this great personage should issue from 
Judea; an expectation which was probably 
derived from the more distinct anticipations 
of the Jews, if not partly from a remote 
glimpse at the meaning of those prophecies 
which referred to Messiah, and which many 
educated persons must have read in the 
Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
But the expectations which the nations en- 
tertained were, like those of the Jews, con- 
nected with dreams of a universal temporal 
empire which the expected Messiah was to 
establish. As, however, they had not the 
strong national interest in the expectation 
of a conquering king, they clung with less 
tenacity than the Jews to this notion of his 
functions, although, blinded by it, they were 
for a while as unable as the Hebrews to re- 
cognise the Anointed of God in the infant 
of Bethlehem. 

The prevalence and character of this ex- 
pectation account for the watchfulness of 
Herod, and for the horrible promptitude 
with which he ordered the massacre of all 
the infants of Bethlehem as soon as the 
inquiries of the Parthian magi gave him 
cause to suspect that the King of the Jews 
had been born there. 

The object of the present work is not the 
history of Jesus Christ, or of his ministry, or 
of the introduction of the Christian system, 
but the public history of the Jewish people. 
There are points, indeed, to which it will be 
necessary to advert, and the coincidence of 
events will be indicated by the chronological 
table (taken, with some improvement, from 
Hales) which we introduce below *. 

B.C. 

* John the Baptist born about spring .... 5 

Roman enrolment by Cyrenius — 

Nativity of Jesus Christ about autumn . . — 
Christ presented in the Temple .... — 
Visit of the Parthian magi to Jerusalem ... 4 
Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt . — 
Massacre of the infants at Bethlehem . — 
I Death of Herod about spring — 



THE ROMANS. 



476 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. 



But we must throughout assume that the 
reader is familiar with the circumstantial de- 
tails which are embodied in the simple and 
authentic narratives of the holy Evangelists, 

B.C. 

Archelaus ethnarch of Judea 4 

Passover, April 12 — 

A.D. 

Archelaus deposed, and Judea made a Roman province 6 
The assessment, or taxing, made by Cyrenius the go- 



vernor of Syria — 

Ananus or Annas made high-priest — 

Coponius, the first procurator of Judea . — 

Christ visits the Temple in his twelfth year ... 9 

Marcus Ambivius, the second procurator ... 9 
Tiberius, joint emperor with Augustus . . . .12 

Annius R.ufus, third procurator 13 

Death of Augustus, Aug. 19 M 

Valerius Gratus, fourth procurator, eleven years . . — 

Ishmael, high-priest 21 

Eieazer, son of Annas, high-priest 22 

Simon, son of Camith, high-priest £3 

Joseph Caiaphas, high-priest, eleven years . . .24 
Pontius Pilate, fifth procurator, ten years . . .25 

John the Baptist begins his ministry about autumn 26 
Christ baptized near autumn, being about thirty years 

of age 27 

Temptation in the wilderness forty days . . . — 

Disciples chosen — John i. 37 — 52 — 

First miracle at Cana in Galilee — 

I. Passover 28 

Christ visits and purges the Temple .... — 

Opens his ministry in Judea — 

John the Baptist imprisoned by Herod Antipas . . 28 

Christ's ministry in Galilee — 

Sermon on the Mount 

II. Passover 29 

Twelve apostles sent to proclaim Christ . . . — 

John beheaded — 

III. Passover 30 

Seventy disciples sent to proclaim Christ . . . — 

Christ's Transfiguration — 

IV. Passover 31 

Christ's Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension . . — 

Church of Christ founded at Pentecost .... 

Martyrdom of Stephen, about autumn . . . .34 

Paul's Conversion and ministry 3o 

Marcellus, sixth procurator 

Marullus, seventh procurator 36 

Jewish embassy to Caligula 40 

Herod Agrippa, king of Judea 41 

Martyrdom of James the Elder 44 

Famine in Judea in the reign of Claudius . . . — 

Cuspius Fadius, eighth procurator — 

Tiberius Alexander, ninth procurator .... 46 

j Ventidius Cumanus, tenth procurator . . . .47 

First Christian Council at Jerusalem . . . . 49 

Felix, eleventh procurator, ten years . . . . 52 

Paul imprisoned at Jerusalem 59 

Porcius Festus, twelfth procurator 61 

Paul's first visit to Rome — 

Albinus, thirteenth procurator 63 

Gessius Florus, fourteenth procurator . . . .64 

Paul's second visit to Rome — 

The Jewish war begins 65 

Martyrdom of Peter and Paul — 

First Roman persecution of the Church . — 

Vespasian invades Judea 63 

Titus destroys Jerusalem 70 



and in the supplementary accounts which 
i St. Luke has supplied in the Acts of the 
i Apostles. 

The census, which was begun by Cyrenius, 
j was not completed to the extent originally 
contemplated, for Herod found means to 
disabuse Augustus of the impression under 
which he had acted, and was restored to the 
imperial favour and confidence. To make 
him some amends, the emperor was disposed 
to have consigned to him the forfeited king- 
dom of the Nabathseans ; but the painful 
disagreements and atrocities in the family 
of Herod were about the same time brought 
so conspicuously under his notice, that, with 
his usual sagacity, he doubted the wisdom 
of committing the conquest and government 
of a new kingdom to an old man who had 
proved himself incapable of ruling his own 
house. 

We have before incidentally mentioned 
the part which was taken by the wife of 
Pheroras, in paying the fines of the Phari- 
sees who refused to take the oath required 
of all the people. In consequence of this, 
many of that powerful body began to whisper 
that God would give the kingdom to Phero- 
ras ; on which account Herod caused several 
Pharisees and some members of his own 
family to be executed. Further, regarding 
the wife of Pheroras as the cause of all this 
trouble, he very peremptorily required him 
to divorce her. His brother replied that 
nothing but death should separate him from 
his wife, and retired in disgust to Perea, in 
his own territory beyond Jordan. Thus was 
quite destroyed the good understanding 
which had for so many years subsisted be- 
tween the two brothers. Blinded by resent- 
ment, Pheroras readily came into the plans 
of Antipater: and between them it was set- 
tled that Herod should be taken off by 
poison; that Antipater should sit on his 
throne ; and that meanwhile he should con- 
trive to be sent to Rome, to preclude any 
suspicion of his part in the transaction. This 
plot would probably have succeeded but for 
the death of Pheroras himself, which led to 
the discovery of the whole, and even made 
known to Herod the part which Antipater 
had taken in compassing the death of the 



CHAJ?. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



47^ 



two sons of the first Mariamne. It appeared 
also that the second Mariamne was a party 
in this conspiracy, in consequence of which 
she was divorced, the name of her son was 
struck out of the king's will, and her father, 
the high-priest Simon, was deposed from his 
office, which was given to Matthias the son 
of Theophilus. On these disclosures, Herod 
managed to get Antipater back from Rome 
without allowing him to become acquainted 
with what had transpired. On his arrival 
he was formally accused before Quintilius 
Varus, the prefect of Syria, who was then at 
Jerusalem, and was imprisoned until the 
affair should have been submitted to the 
judgment of Augustus. 

Meanwhile Herod, then in the sixty-ninth 
year of his age, fell ill of that grievous dis- 
ease of which he died, and which, by some 
singular dispensation of Providence, appears 
to have been the peculiar lot of tyrannous 
and proud sovereigns, and which rendered 
him wretched in himself and a terror to all 
around him. A report got into circulation 
that his disease afforded no chance of his 
recovery, in consequence of which a dan- 
gerous tumult was excited by two celebrated 
doctors, named Judas and Matthias, who 
instigated their disciples to pull down and 
destroy a golden eagle of large size and 
exquisite workmanship, which had been 
placed over one of the gates of the temple. 
Scarcely had this rash act been completed, 
when the royal guards appeared and seized 
the two leaders and forty of their most 
zealous disciples. Some of them were burnt, 
and others executed in various ways by 
Herod's order. Being suspected of having 
privately encouraged the tumult, Matthias 
was deprived of his high-priesthood, and the 
ofhce given to Joazar, the brother of his 
wife. 

In the mean time the disease of Herod 
became more loathsome and intolerable. It 
appears to have been an erosion of the 
bowek and other viscera by worms, which 
occasioned violent spasms and the most 
exquisite tortures, until he at length became 
a mass of putrefaction. Experiencing no 
benefit from the warm baths of Calirrhoe 
beyond Jordan, he gave up all hopes of 



recovery, and after having distributed pre- 
sents among his attendants and soldiers, he 
returned to Jericho. His sufferings were 
not likely to humanise his naturally savage 
disposition. He was convinced, by the recent 
outbreak, that his death would occasion no 
sorrow in Israel, and therefore, to oblige the 
nation to mourn at his death, he sent for the 
heads of the most eminent families in Judea, 
and confined them in prison, leaving orders 
with his sister Salome and her husband 
Alexas to put them all to death as soon as 
he should have breathed his last. This san- 
guinary design was, however, not executed 
by them. 

At length Herod received full powers from 
Rome to proceed against his son Antipater. 
At this intelligence, the dying tyrant ap- 
peared to revive ; but he soon after attempted 
suicide, and, although prevented, the wailing 
cries, usual in such cases, were raised 
throughout the palace for him, as if he wore 
actually dead. When Antipater, in his 
confinement heard these well-known lament- 
ations, he attempted by large bribes to in- 
duce his guard to permit his escape ; but he 
was so universally hated for procuring the 
death of the sons of Mariamne, that the 
guard made his offers known, and Herod 
ordered his immediate execution. On the 
fifth day after, Herod himself died, shortly 
before the Passover, in the seventieth year 
of his age, and the thirty-seventh from his 
appointment to the throne. Before his 
death was announced Salome, as if by his 
order, liberated the nobles confined in the 
hippodrome, whose death she had been 
charged to execute, but dared not, had she 
been so inclined. His corpse, under the 
escort of his life-guard, composed of Thra- 
cians, Germans, and Gauls, was carried with 
great pomp to Herodium, and there buried. 

Herod had ten wives, two of whom bore 
him no children, and whose names history 
has not preserved. 

By his final will, Herod (who had formerly 
obtained the permission of Augustus to dis- 
pose of the succession as he pleased) divided 
his dominions among his three sons, Arche- 
laus, Herod Antipas, and Philip. To Arche- 
laus he bequeathed that which was distinc- 



478 

tively considered the kingdom, comprising 
Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. Antipas he 
appointed tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, and 
Philip tetrarch of the territory comprised in 
the districts of Trachonitis, Gaulonitis, Bata- 
nea, and Paneas. The respective value of 
these territories may be estimated by the 
amount of yearly revenue which each of 
these princes derived from his portion. 
Archelaus obtained six hundred talents from 
his kingdom, Antipas two hundred talents 
from his tetrarchy, and Philip one hundred 
talents from his. The will was of no force 
until confirmed by Augustus ; and this con- 
firmation was ultimately obtained, although 
most of the other parties interested disputed 
the pre-eminence which it assigned to 
Archelaus. But, although the territorial 
distribution was approved by the Roman 
emperor, he declined to give to Archelaus 
any higher title than that of Ethnarch until 
he should show himself worthy to be a king : 
this he never did. But the Jews, heedless 
of these distinctions, looked upon him as a 
king, and gave him the regal title. Having 
obtained this recognition, Archelaus paid 
little heed to the promise of good govern- 
ment which, at the beginning, he had made 
from the golden throne in the temple-court. 
He proved as tyrannical as his father, with- 
out any traces of those splendid qualities 
which gleamed through the darkness of 
Herod's character. 

In one thing he complied with the general 
wish of the people, by deposing the high- 
priest J oazar, who was highly unpopular in 
consequence of having superseded the former 
high-priest Matthias, who (as we have seen) 
was deposed on account of the encourage- 
ment he was supposed to have given to the 
rioters in the celebrated affair of the golden 
eagle. In the room of Joazar, his brother 
Eleazer was raised to the pontificate, and, 
soon after, J esus the son of Sia. In the end, 
the people became so completely worn out 
with the tyrannies and disputes of the Herod 
family that they sent a complaint to Rome 
on the subject ; and renewed an application 
which they had previously made — that an 
end might be made of this paltry game of 
sovereignty, and that the territory should be | 



[book v. 

made in form, as well as in fact, a Roman 
province. The strong and urgent represent- 
ations of the principal J ews and Samaritans 
at length secured the attention of Augustus, 
who, having by inquiry satisfied himself of 
the mal-administration of Archelaus, deposed 
him, confiscated his property, banished him 
to Vienne in Gaul, and declared his territory 
a Roman province. 6 ad, 

The census or enrolment which had been 
commenced, but was suspended, at the time 
of the birth of Christ, was now carried into 
effect. The same Cyrenius who had acted 
on the former occasion, and who had now 
become president of Syria, entered the 
country with an armed force to confiscate 
the property of Archelaus, and to complete 
the census. This was submitted to by the 
nation generally, as formerly it had sub- 
mitted to the enrolment; and Cyrenius 
having completed his mission, returned to 
Antioch, leaving Coponius as procurator of 
J udea. J oazar, who was very favourable to 
the new order of things, and had done much 
to forward its introduction, was restored to 
the high-priesthood; and his influence, to- 
gether with the presence of the procurator, 
maintained the nation for a time in a state 
of peace and subordination. 

It was not long, however, before the 
country was again thrown into a flame by 
the appearance of Judas the Gaulonite — or 
the Galilean, as he is called by Josephus 
elsewhere, and by St. Luke (Acts v. 36), 
(who had made himself terrible in the early 
part of the reign of Archelaus as a daring 
and successful captain of banditti) — in the 
character of a patriot; which character long 
continued to be taken by the robber chiefs 
of ensuing years, as it gave them a sort of 
excuse for allowing their men to exercise 
their real vocation upon those who refused 
to adopt their view of public affairs. The 
ground taken by this man, and by a turbu- 
lent Pharisee of the name of Sadok, was well 
chosen, and sure at all times to rouse the 
sympathies of a large proportion of the 
people, and more especially at this time, 
when the expectation of the speedy appear- 
ance of a native king, the Messiah, was pre- 
valent. Although, therefore, Judas was 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



479 



slain, and his adherents dispersed, the prin- 
ciples took deep root among the Zealots, as 
they called themselves. These were, that 
the payment of tribute to the Romans was 
not only downright slavery, but was unlawful 
in itself, and utterly repugnant to the 
theocracy, since God was their only king. 
It was certainly rather late now to fall back 
upon this first principle of the theocracy; 
and at this time it had been produced less 
by anything else than by the Pharisaic pride 
which had infected the mass of the nation, 
and which made them look down upon the 
rest of the world as idolators and slaves, and 
themselves as the special favourites of 
heaven, the only free people, and as alone 
destined for ultimate greatness, and to rise 
very soon upon the wreck of other nations, 
which their eagerly expected Messiah would 
put under their feet. It was owing mainly 
to the prevalence of this state of feeling, 
that the Jews were not only blinded from 
recognising in Jesus Christ the Messiah they 
expected, but were led into those extrava- 
gancies which produced the troubles of sub- 
| sequent years, and the ultimate overthrow 
| of the nation. Undoubtedly the sentiments 
entertained by these persons were, in the 
main, founded on the sound principles of the 
old theocracy ; but they were not now under 
the old theocracy, neither were they the 
Jews of the old theocracy; and the views 
now produced and acted on were not such as 
they — or perhaps any Jews since the Capti- 
vity — had a right to entertain. 

It is necessary now to regard Judea as a 
Roman province ; being one of the provinces 
on the outskirts of the empire, which the 
emperors reserved under their own jurisdic- 
tion, as was the case with the whole of Syria, 
to which it was now attached. The pra- 
curators were appointed by them without 
any reference to the senate. They had not 
only the charge of collecting the imperial 
revenues, but also had the power of life and 
death ; and on account of their high dignity 
j they are called "Governors" (fjyefioves) in 
the isew Testament. Their duties chiefly 
consisted in collecting and remitting the 
tribute, in the administration of justice, and 
in the repression of tumults. In many 



respects they resembled the really dependent 
pashas of the modern Turkish empire. Some 
of them held independent jurisdictions, while 
others were subject to the nearest proconsul 
or president, as those of Judea were to the 
president of Syria. The procurators of 
Judea resided principally at Cassarea, which 
became the civil and military, as Jerusalem 
was the ecclesiastical, metropolis of the 
province. They occupied the splendid palace 
which had been built there by Herod. On 
the great festivals, however, they repaired to 
Jerusalem, that by their presence and au- 
thority order might be maintained among 
the crowds which assembled on such occa- 
sions at the holy city. For this purpose 
they were attended by cohorts or regiments 
of soldiers (each consisting of about one 
thousand men). The usual force at the dis- 
posal of the procurator was ordinarily six 
cohorts, of which one was permanently sta- 
tioned at Jerusalem, and the other five at 
Cossarea, where they were ready for any 
service which might require them. This 
force sufficed generally to keep the province 
in order; but, if an increase were at any 
time needed, it could be procured from the 
governor of Syria. 

The payment of taxes to the Romans was, 
as we have seen, considered by the Jews as 
an intolerable grievance, although not greater 
than, under previous conquerors, and in a 
different state of the national mind, they 
had endured with patience. From this it 
happened that those natives whom the 
Roman procurators employed in collecting 
the taxes were detested as plunderers in the 
cause of the Romans, as betrayers of the 
liberty of their country, and as abettors of 
those who had enslaved it. From the odium 
attached to the office few men of character 
would accept it; and hence the Publicans 
(as they were called) were in general a loose- 
principled set of men, whose conduct in 
taking every means of turning their position 
to their own advantage greatly increased 
the ill repute in which the body was held. 
Apart from the grievances connected with 
the tribute, the Jews enjoyed under the 
Romans a very fair degree of freedom. They 
were perfectly unrestrained in worshipping 



480 



THE BIBLE HISTOEY. 



[BOOK V. 



God in their own way, following their own 
rites, and observing their own customs ; and 
they were to a considerable extent governed 
by their own laws. The administration of 
religious ceremonies was, as before, committed 
to the high-priest and to the Sanhedrim, 
which last tribunal was still permitted to 
adjudicate in matters which may be called 
ecclesiastical, although its penal sentences 
could not be executed until they had been 
examined and confirmed by the Roman 
governor, who then committed its execution 
to his own officers. But with all this, there 
was the tribute, and there was the equal 
annoyance, to so exclusive a people, of the 
constant and domineering presence in their 
cities of the Romans, whom they could not 
but regard as an unclean and idolatrous 
people, and who were not at all celebrated 
for their forbearing or gentle treatment of 
the subject nations in which they were 
quartered ; and when to this we add the 
avarice and cruelty of the procurators, and 
the frauds and extortions of the publicans, 
we may find no difficulty in accounting for 
the state of feverish irritation into which 
the nation soon fell, and which was the 
precursor of the maddened outbreaks which 
ultimately ensued. 

It was not, however, from the Romans 
that those calamities of the nations pro- 
ceeded which made the record of their 
remaining history to be, like the roll of 
Ezekiel, "written within and without" with 
" lamentation, and mourning, and woe." 
Their own rulers multiplied their vexations, 
and debarred them from the enjoyment of 
the comforts and immunities which were 
still left to them by the Roman magistrates. 
The leaders of the people and the chief 
priests were, according to the testimony of 
Josephus, profligate wretches who purchased 
their appointments by bribes and other acts 
of iniquity, and who maintained their ill- 
acquired authority by the most abominable 
crimes. The inferior priests, and those who 
possessed the least shadow of authority, had, 
for the most part, become in the highest 
degree abandoned and dissolute. Excited 
by these corrupt examples, the multitude 
ran headlong into every kind of iniquity ; 



and, by their endless seditions, extortions, 
and robberies, soon armed against themselves 
both the justice of God and the vengeance of 
man. 

The tetrarchies of Antipas and Philip were 
not affected by this new order of things. 
They ruled their states with the usual power 
of tetrarchs, and without the immediate in- 
terference of the Romans. Antipas sedu- 
lously cultivated the favour of Tiberius, who 




[Tiberius.] 

succeeded Augustus in 14 a.d. With him 
Antipas, who is the " Herod" of the Gospels, 
was in high favour. Hence he gave the 
name of Tiberias to the fine city which he 
built on the western border of the lake of 
Gennesareth, and from which the lake it- 
self soon acquired the name of " the Sea of 
Tiberias." Earlier in his reign Antipas had 
enlarged and strongly fortified the town of 
Sepporis, and made it the capital of Galilee. 
The other tetrarch, Philip, was by no means 
backward in this sort of stone and mortar 
adulation ; for he gave the name of Jidias 
(after the empress) to the ancient fishing 
village of Bethsaida, which he improved into 
a fine city, and which lay on his portion of 
the lake's border. The whole town of Paneas, 
about the source of the Jordan, he also much 
enlarged and adorned, and then gave it the 
name of Ccesarea, to which Philippi was 
soon added, to distinguish it from the other 
Ccesarea. 

Meanwhile the Roman procurators in Judea 
followed, without hesitation, the example set 
by Herod of removing the incumbents of the 
high-priesthood at their pleasure. Hence the 
changes were frequent in an office intended 
to be for life. In the changes in this office 
under the Greek kings of Syria some regard 
was paid to the real pontifical family ; but in 



I — ■ 

j CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



481 



these later days any priest, and ultimately 
any Levite, might aspire to the high-priest- 
hood, if he could contrive to recommend him- 
self to the favourable notice of the governor. 
It thus happened that there were often living 
several persons who had been high-priests. 
These enjoyed for the remainder of their 
lives privileges and distinctions beyond other 
priests — the rather as they generally found 
means of enriching themselves during their 
turn of office. Joazar, who had been re- 
stored by Cyrenius, it was soon after found 
necessary to remove, on account of the un- 
popularity he incurred by the part he took 
during the insurrection of Judas of Galilee. 
The office was then given to Ananus (the 
Annas of Luke iii. 2), the son of Seth, who 
continued to occupy it until the year 21 a.d., j 
when Valerius Gratus, the first procurator 
under Tiberius, deposed him, and promoted 
Ishmael, the son of Phabus, to that dignity. 
Not satisfied with this choice, the procurator 
removed him the next year, and appointed 
Eleazer, the son of the former high-priest, 
Ananus, in his place. But in the course of 
the year Eleazer, in his turn, was compelled 
to give place to Simon, the son of Camith, 
who, in the following year, was also deposed, 
and Joseph, surnamed Caiaphas, son-in-law 
to Ananus, was appointed in his stead. 24 

A.D. 

The procurators themselves were frequently 
changed, as may be seen by the table at page 
475, and the change was seldom for the better. 
The undisguised disgust of the Jews at idola- 
try, and therefore at things which the Romans 
held sacred, and the pollution which they at- 
tached to the presence of idolators, and con- 
sequently to their Roman masters, was highly 
irritating to those proud and not naturally 
intolerant conquerors. They repaid in kind 
what must have seemed to them the unsocial 
intolerance of the Jews, and took frequent 
opportunities of exhibiting a marked con- 
tempt for their religion and law, and of sub- 
jecting them to much oppressive treatment. 
Of the procurators who governed Judea 
Pontius Pilate is the best known, and the 
most frequently mentioned in history. He 
is supposed to have been a native of Italy. 
He was a tyrant — cruel and vindictive when 



left to the undisturbed exercise of his power, 
but timid and pusillanimous when opposed. 
He made the tribunal of justice the instru- 
ment of his avarice, and hence the seat of 
government became a general scene of extor- 
tion and corruption. When not acted upon 
by any selfish or guilty feeling, his conduct 
appears to have been determined rather by 
fear or by expediency than by any fixed 
principles of duty, as in the well-known ex- 
ample when our Saviour was brought before 
him. From the first his conduct excited 
extreme dissatisfaction in the country. It 
had not been usual for the Roman soldiers 
to carry their standards into Jerusalem, as 
it was well known that the Jews felt the 
strongest objections to them, on account of 
the images which they bore, and which they 
considered idolatrous. This forbearance was 
very remarkable under all the circumstances, 
and considering the reverence with which 
the standards were regarded by the Romans 
themselves. Pilate resolved to discontinue it; 
and when, therefore, a body of soldiers were 
sent from Samaria into winter quarters at 
Jerusalem, they were directed to carry their 
standards into the city by night. On this 
many of the Jews repaired to Csesarea to 
entreat the governor to order the removal 
of the standards. At first they were treated 
with neglect, and then with insult, but be- 
haved with so much temper and resolution 
that they ultimately carried their point. It 
is also stated, on the authority of Philo, that 
Pilate set up shields with idolatrous inscrip- 
tions at Jerusalem ; on which the J ews sent 
a complaint to the emperor, and obtained 
an order for their removal, accompanied by 
a rebuke to Pilate for his conduct. It was, 
perhaps, in resentment for this that the go- 
vernor undertook to construct an aqueduct 
to bring water to Jerusalem from a fountain 
twenty miles off, not from any real desire to 
benefit the city, but that he might drain the 
treasury of the temple by demanding funds 
for the work. On this account, when on his 
throne at Jerusalem, he was beset by the 
most earnest entreaties by the citizens ; but 
he sent disguised soldiers among the mul- 
titude, armed with daggers and bludgeons, 
concealed under their garments, by whom 



482 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book v. 



several were slain, and others trampled to 
death, in the crowd. 

It was in the year 26 a.d., about autumn, 
being the second year of Pilate's administra- 
tion, that John the Baptist appeared from 
the wilderness, announcing himself as the pro- 
mised Harbinger of the promised Deliverer. 
He was heard with much attention, and was 
followed by crowds, to whom he preached, 
and whom he baptized in the river Jordan. 
He was highly in favour with the people, as 
every one expected a Deliverer ; and John's 
mission was in consonance with that ex- 
pectation, as he did not at first define the 
spiritual nature of the Deliverance, although 
to the discerning it might have been inti- 
mated by the burden of all his preaching — 
Repentance. 

The year following, among those who came 
to be baptized in J ordan, by John, was Jesus, 
who had hitherto abode with his parents in 
obscure and humble circumstances at Naza- 
reth, of which place he was popularly sup- 
posed to be a native, although really born 
in Bethlehem of Judea. The prophet of the 
wilderness recognised Him as he walked, and 
cried in the audience of the multitude, — 
" Behold the Lamb of God, which takeih away 
the sins of the world 1 " A grand declaration, 
comprehending a clear intimation of the 
character of the salvation He was to work, 
from sin, and its extent — the world! That 
He should come to be baptized of him, as- 
tonished John— "/ have need to be baptized 
of Thee, and comest Thou to me? " But he 
submitted ; and after the baptism the testi- 
mony of John was confirmed by the voice 
from heaven, which cried, " This is my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased ! " 

John soon after had an opportunity of 
preaching to the troops of Herod- Antipas, 
the tetrarch, then on their march into Arabia 
Petrsea, with the king of which, named Aretas, 
a quarrel had arisen, on account of the con- 
duct of Herod to the daughter of that prince, 
to whom he had been married. On a journey 
to Rome Antipas had visited his brother, 
Herod-Philip (son of the second Mariamne), 
and had there commenced an intrigue with 
his wife, Herodias (daughter of Aristobulus, 
the son of the Asamonean Mariamne), and 



promised that on his return he would put 
away the daughter of king Aretas, and 
marry her. The Arabian princess, coming to 
the knowledge of this, fled to her father to 
Petra, and complained to him of her wrongs. 
Herod on his return performed his promise 
to Herodias, by taking her from his brother, 
and marrying her himself. This was so deeply 
resented by Aretas that he raised an osten- 
sible question about boundaries, and a war 
commenced. Herod, betrayed by deserters, 
was beaten, and the whole army dispersed. 
According to the testimony of Josephus, the 
whole nation joined in attributing this loss 
to the Divine judgment against Herod for 
the murder of John the Baptist. For while 
the military operations were in progress, 
John had in the most unreserved terms 
condemned the conduct of Antipas in taking 
away the wife of his living brother; and his 
influence with the people was so great that 
Herod dreaded the consequences of his re- 
probation, and put him in prison, where, con- 
trary to the first intention of the tetrarch. 
his death was compassed by the vindictive 
Herodias, in the manner known to all our 
readers. 

Meanwhile J esus had commenced his great 
mission, confirming it by many miracles. His 
own mission was confined to the Jews, because 
it was necessary that their acceptance or re- 
jection of him should be completed, before 
the fulness of hi3 doctrine could be opened 
to the Gentiles. We all know how he was 
rejected in his proper character, although 
there were times when the mass of the 
people would have acknowledged him as 
the Messiah, and have made him their king, 
if he had not refused to sanction the delusion 
under which they acted, or to be received 
in any character but that which he claimed. 
" He came unto his own, and his own re- 
ceived him not." That rejection of him was 
formally completed (31 a.d.) when they cried 
aloud for his blood, and had it; and had, too, 
its dread penalties, which they invoked — 
" His blood be on us and on our children ! " j 
It was merely that their peculiar mission as 
a nation should be accomplished, by their 
recognition or rejection of the Christ of God, 
that their existence as a nation had been 



CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



483 



prolonged to that time. After this their 
peculiar vocation was at an end, "the veil 
of the temple was rent," the middle wall 
of partition was broken down*, the nation 
was cast loose from the special mercies of 
God, and left to work out its own destruc- 
tion by its own imaginations and devices. 
This was what Jesus himself predicted, just 
prior to his final rejection: — "0 Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, 
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, 
how often would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together, even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and ye would not. 
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." 
Desolate indeed ! 

It may very safely be said that, apart from 
the history of Christ altogether, no impar- 
tial reader of the concluding portions of the 
Jewish history can fail to recognise that the 
conduct which was produced in the Jews, by 
mistaken notions and expectations regarding 
the promised Messiah, was the primary cause 
of their ruin as a nation. 

In the same year in which Christ was 
crucified, the mild and just government of 
the tetrarch, Philip, was terminated by his 
death ; and as he left no sons, his territo- 
ries of Trachonitis, Gaulonitis, Batanea and 
Abila were united to the Roman province of 
Syria. 

Pilate's oppressive administration in Judea 
continued to the year 35 a.d. At length, 
having caused the slaughter of a great num- 
ber of Samaritans, who had no warlike in- 
tention, but had been induced to assemble 
in large numbers on Mount Gerizim, by 
the promises of a pretended Messiah, strong 
complaints of his conduct were forwarded to 




[Caligula.] 
* Fph^snns ii. 14. 



Vitellius, the president of Syria, who ordered 
him to proceed to Rome, to give an ac- 
count of his administration to the emperor. 
Tiberius was dead before he arrived, but his 
successor, Caius Caligula, banished him to 
Yienne, in Gaul, where he is said to have 
co mmi tted suicide. Vitellius had been at 
Jerusalem, early in the same year, at the 
Passover, and was received with honour and 
distinction ; and out of compliment to the 
inhabitants for their respect and obedience, 
he remitted, for that year, the duty upon all 
the fruit exposed for sale in the city. He 
staid only three days ; but before his depar- 
ture he deposed the high-priest Caiaphas, 
and appointed in his place Jonathan, the son 
of that Ananus or Annas, who has already 
been mentioned. Vitellius again went to 
Jerusalem soon after the transaction which 
occasioned Pilate to be sent home, and was on 
this occasion accompanied by Herod-Antipas. 
He then took the high-priesthood from J ona- 
than, whom he had so lately appointed, and 
gave it to his brother Theophilus. He was 
still at Jerusalem, when intelligence arrived 
of the death of Tiberius and the succession of j 
Caligula, on which he took from the people 
the oaths of allegiance to the new emperor, 
and returned to Antioch. 

Caligula appointed Marullus to be procura- 
tor of Judea, in the room of Pontius Pilate ; 
and his arrival superseded the governor 
(Marcellus), whom Vitellius had appointed 
to act temporarily. At the same time 
the new emperor conferred the vacant 
tetrarchy of Philip, and the adjoining 
tetrarchy of Abilene, upon Agrippa (called 
Herod in the Acts of the Apostles), the 
son of Aristobulus, and grandson of Herod 
the Great and the Asamonean Mariamne. 
Agrippa had experienced many changes of 
fortune. He had been sent to Rome before 
the death of Herod the Great, and had there 
been brought up with Drusus, the son of 
Tiberius. By his profuse generosity he soon 
squandered his property, but gained, as he 
supposed, many friends at the imperial court. 
But on the untimely death of Drusus, Tiberius 
removed all the associates of the young prince, 
as their presence would only serve to remind 
him of his loss and of the disappointment 



r i 2 



484 

of his hopes. Thus finding himself speedily- 
reduced to the utmost distress, he returned 
to Judea, where he received some assistance 
from his relations, but not sufficient to sup- 
ply his extravagant expenditure. After some 
misfortunes and some ill conduct he returned 
to Italy, where he was cast into prison and 
laden with chains, by order of the emperor, 
because the charioteer, who drove Agrippa 
and Caligula, betrayed that he had over- 
heard the former express a wish that the old 
emperor would die and make room for the 
latter. When, soon after, Tiberius actually 
died, one of the first acts of Caligula was to 
release his friend from his prison, to clothe 
him with purple, to place a diadem upon his 
brow, and to exchange the iron chain, which 
he had worn on his account, for one of the 
same weight in gold ; he then bestowed upon 
him the two vacant tetrarchies which we have 
mentioned, with the title of King. 

This exaltation of one whom he had treated 
as an inferior and dependent was wormwood 
to Herod-Antipas, and still more so to his 
notorious wife, Herodias, who was devoured 
with envy at the advantage gained by her 
brother (for such he was), and ceased not 
urging her husband to endeavour to procure 
for himself also the royal title : they accord- 
ingly went together to Rome. But Agrippa, 
having learned their design, sent his freed- 
man, Fortunatus, with a letter and verbal in- 
structions to prejudice the claim of Antipas, 
and that with such success that in seeking 
what he had not, he lost what he had, being 
deposed from his tetrarchy and banished 
to Yienne, in Gaul. Herodias voluntarily 
shared his disgrace, declining the pardon 
and favour which was offered to her on 
the ground of her relationship to Agrippa. 
That fortunate person received his uncle's 
tetrarchy, of Galilee and Perea, as an addi- 
tion to his kingdom, together with all his 
treasures. 

Caligula began to reign well, but soon be- 
came insane, under the consciousness of un- 
limited power. Among his lunacies was that 
of deeming the Jews disaffected, because they 
were the only people who would not render 
to him the divine honours which he claimed. 
He therefore issued imperative orders that 



[book v. 

his statue should be set up in the very 
sanctuary of the temple of Jerusalem. 
Foreseeing the determined opposition of 
the Jews, Petronius, the governor of Syria, 
delayed the execution of this order, under 
the pretext of procuring the best materials 
and most eminent artists for the work. 
Meanwhile the emperor was induced by the 
humble remonstrances of the Jews, and still 
more by the timely and judicious interces- 
sion of Agrippa, who happened to be then 
at Rome, to relinquish a purpose which had 
filled Judea with such consternation, that 
the business of life was for a time sus- 
pended, and the fields left uncultivated. 

Agrippa was still at Rome, when Caligula 
was assassinated in 41 a d,; and his influence, 
which was very considerable at Rome, was 




[Claudius.] 

employed with such effect as to help to 
induce the senate to recognise the act of 
the soldiers who had dragged Claudius, the 
uncle of Caligula, from his retirement, and I 
proclaimed him emperor. The senate and 
many influential Romans had indulged the I 
dream of re-establishing the republic. This 
service was gratefully acknowledged by the 
emperor, who relinquished to his government 
Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, with the title 
of king of Judea. The broken kingdom of 
Herod the Great was thus re-united in the 
person of his grandson, whose dominion was 
indeed larger by the tetrarchy of Abilene. 
Claudius also entered into a solemn alliance 
with the new king, and issued several edicts 
in favour of the Jews: moreover, at Agrippa's 
request, the emperor bestowed the kingdom 
of Chalcis on his brother Herod. Soon after 
Agrippa obtained even the honour of the 
consulship, and Herod was appointed praetor, 



THE BIBLE HISTOKY. 



CHAP. V.] 

and both became entitled to enter the Roman 
senate, and were allowed to pay their com- 
pliments to the emperor in Greek, although 
Latin was usually employed. Nor were these 
honours so empty as some may imagine. 

On his return to Judea the king was well 
received by all his subjects, not only on ac- 
count of the benefits which his influence at 
Rome had already procured, and afforded the 
means of procuring, and his obvious desire 
to make his government beneficial, but on 
account of his descent from the Asamonean 
family, the memory of which was still che- 
rished by the Jewish nation with affection 
and respect. One of his first acts was to de- 
pose Theophilus, the high-priest, and others 
were appointed and changed in such quick 
succession as to suggest that in those evil 
days the king had great difficulty in find- 
ing persons suitably qualified for that dis- 
tinguished office. On his arrival at Jeru- 
salem, many thank-offerings, and many acts 
of beneficence, evinced his gratitude to God 
for the favour shown to him ; and the golden 
chain, with which the emperor, Caligula, re- 
placed the iron that had once entered into 
his soul, he hung up conspicuously in the 
temple, as a votive offering and as a monu- 
ment of the mutations of human affairs. 

Agrippa appears to have been sincerely 
attached to the Jewish religion as he found 
it; but he endeavoured, as far as he durst, 
to lead the Jews into greater accommodation 
of manners to the Romans than had yet pre- 
vailed, feeling, probably, that it was only by 
this that their relation to the Romans could 
become tolerable. The grant to the Jews, 
by Claudius, of perfect liberty to follow the 
customs of their own religion and law in 
every country, had been accompanied by the 
significant hint to themselves that they were 
expected to be peaceable, and that while they 
claimed so much respect to their peculiar 
religious opinions, they would henceforth 
refrain from treating the religion of others 
with contempt. The Jews, however, could 
not be induced to take any interest in the 
bloody games of the amphitheatre, to which 
Agrippa endeavoured to conciliate them, and 
for this singularity they are entitled to our 
respect. The king had an insatiate craving 



485 



after popularity, which made him anxious to 
do whatever might please the Jews, whether 
right or wrong in itself. Hence, rather than 
from any innate intolerance or cruelty of 
nature, he persecuted the Christians, who, 
since the persecution with which the con- 
version of St. Paul (35 a.d.) is connected, to 
this period (44 a.d.) of Agrippa's reign, ap- 
pear to have been unmolested in Jerusalem. 
The first who fell a sacrifice to Agrippa's zeal 
for popular favour was the Apostle James, 
one of the sons of Zebedee, and brother of 
John, who was beheaded. Perceiving how 
pleasing this act was to the Jews, he pro- 
ceeded also to imprison Peter, with the in- 
tention of destroying him after the Passover. 
The miraculous deliverance of the Apostle 
from this danger is known to all our readers. 

It was not long after this that Agrippa ce- 
lebrated games at Caesarea in honour of the 
emperor. On the second day of the solemnity 
he appeared in the theatre to give audience 
to the Tyrians and Zidonians. At the close 
of his oration the sun so shone upon his 
jewels and his robe of silver as to give him 
a peculiarly radiant appearance ; whereupon 
the heathen multitude, according to the cus- 
toms of that time, hailed him as a god. The 
king did not repel this idolatrous homage, 
but received it with complacency, and almost 
instantly he was stricken with a painful and 
humbling disease of the intestines, very simi- 
lar to that by which Herod the Great had 
been consumed. During his illness all the 
people were in tears, praying God to spare 
the life of their beloved king. But he died 
in the fifth day after the attack, in the fifty- 
fourth year of his age, the seventh of his 
reign, and at the close of the third of his 
rule over all Palestine, 44 a.d. He was 
deeply lamented by all his Jewish subjects; 
but the Greek inhabitants of Csesarea and 
Sebaste testified the most indecent joy, and 
the Roman soldiers behaved in a very dis- 
orderly manner. 

Herod Agrippa left two daughters, and a 
son, Agrippa, only seventeen years of age, 
Claudius was inclined to have given him his 
father's kingdom ; but by the advice of his 
friends, he deferred it for a time on account 
of the youth of the young prince. Judea 



THE ROMANS. 



486 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book Y. 



was then again made a Roman province, the 
government of which was given to Ouspius 
Fadius. 

A difference, soon after, between the 
Romans and Jews, about the custody of the 
sacerdotal dress and ornaments of the high- 
priest, involved so many points of difficulty 
to a Roman, that Claudius was induced, for 
the sake of peace, to place Herod, king of 
Chalcis, over the temple and treasury, with 
the power of appointing the high-priests. 

The famine in Palestine, which is alluded 
to in Acts ix. 27, &c, as being foretold by 
Agabus, commenced during the administra- 
tion of Fadius (45 a.d.), and continued 
under that of his successor. It was very 
severe. While it continued, the Jews were 
most bountifully assisted by Izates, the king 
of Adiabene, and by his mother Helena — 
both proselytes to Judaism. The Christians 
at J erusalem were also most liberally relieved 
by the churches in foreign parts, especially 
by that at Antioch, whose bounty was taken 
to Judea by Paul and Barnabas. Under 
Fadius there arose a false Messiah, who per- 
suaded a great multitude of people to take 
their property and follow him to the Jordan, 
promising that, as Joshua did of old, he 
would stop the course of the river by his 
word, and lead them over on dry ground. 
But the infatuated crowd was overtaken by 
a body of Roman horse and foot, by whom 
they were dispersed. Some were killed, and 
some taken prisoners. Among the latter 
was the impostor himself, who was beheaded, 
and his head sent to Jerusalem to be exhi- 
bited to the populace, to refute his preten- 
sions to divine power. Josephus calls this 
impostor Theudas, but he is probably mis- 
taken as to the name; for, according to 
Luke (Acts v. 36), Theudas made his appear- 
ance before Judas the Gaulonite, and had a 
party of only four hundred men, by whom 
he was at last forsaken. 

Fadius resigned his troublesome office in 
46 a.d., and was succeeded by Tiberius 
Alexander, an apostate Jew, son of the Ala- 
barch* of Alexandria, and nephew to the 

* The Jews who were scattered abroad, and had taken 
up their residence in countries distant from Palestine, had 
rulers of their own. The person who sustained the highest 



celebrated Philo- Judagusf. He did nothing 
remarkable save crucifying the two sons, 
Jacob and Simon, of the notorious Judas the 
Gaulonite, doubtless for spreading the opi- 
nions of their father, and for attempting to 
excite the people against the Romans. 

In 47 a.d. Herod of Chalcis died, just after 
he had deposed Joseph, the son of Camus, to 
whom he had given the high-priesthood two 
years before, and raised to the pontificate 
Ananias, the son of Nebedeus. Claudius 
gave the dominion of Herod and his authority 
over the temple to Agrippa, but still main- 
tained Judea as a Roman province. In the 
same year the procurator Tiberius was re- 
called, and Ventidius Cumanus appointed in 
his stead, from whose administration may be 
dated the beginning of those disturbances 
which ended in the ruin of the Jewish 
nation. 

According to custom, Cumanus was present 
with his cohorts at Jerusalem to keep the 
peace during the Passover of 48 a.d. These 
were the same disorderly cohorts whose dis- 
graceful conduct at Caesarea, on the death of 
Agrippa, had induced Claudius to determine 
to send them out of the country, whieh 
office among those who dwelt in Egypt was denominated 
Alabarchus; the magistrate at the head of the Syrians 
was denominated Archon ; while the numerous and 
powerful Jews who abode in Babylonia called their chief 
the Prince of the Captivity. 

t Philo-Jud2eus, or Philo the Jew, was a native of 
Alexandria, of a priestly race, and brother to Lysimachus 
the Alabarch, or chief, of the numerous Jews inhabiting 
that city. He was a man of great accomplishments and 
learning, well versed in Grecian literature, and his mind 
so deeply imbued with the philosophy of Plato, that he 
acquired the name of the Jewish Plato. His rank and cha- 
racter pointed him out as a suitable leader of the deputa- 
tion sent by the Jews of Alexandria to Caligula to ex- 
onerate themselves from the charge of disaffection which 
the Greek inhabitants of that city had eagerly founded on 
their refusal to worship the emperor, or to receive his 
images. Their right to the citizenship of Alexandria was 
also questioned. At Rome they were better received than 
they expected, and appear to have conducted themselves 
with much tact and discretion. The emperor gave them 
an interview, which left the impression upon his mind that 
they were rather mad than wicked in their refusal to wor- 
ship him ; but he dismissed them without announcing any 
decision. Philo himself wrote a very interesting account 
of this mission, which we stiU possess, together with a 
portion of his other works, whieh were numerous. He 
wrote in Greek : and an edition of his works was first 
printed at Paris in 1552. But the best edition is that of 
Dr. Mangey, printed at London in 1/42 in two folio 
volumes. None of Philo's works have been translated 
into English except the narrative of his mission to I 
Caligula. 



; ciiap. v.] 

intention he was unhappily led to abandon. 
A general tumult was produced throughout 
the city by the conduct of one of the soldiers 
stationed at the gates of the temple to pre- 
serve order, who disrobed himself and inde- 
cently exposed his person during the holy 
solemnities. Taking this obscene act as an 
insult upon their God, the feelings of the 
Jews were highly excited, especially when 
they found that the soldier was not punished 
at their demand. A tumult ensued; and 
every reader of the New Testament knows 
the peculiar wildness and frenzy of a J ewish 
tumult : and Cumanus, finding it impossible 
to restore tranquillity by gentle means, 
ordered all the troops to the scene of the 
commotion. On this, apprehending probably 
a general massacre, the multitude dispersed 
in such haste and confusion that they crushed 
and trampled one another to death ; and it 
is said by Josephus that not less than ten 
thousand persons perished*. Not long after 
this, a servant of the emperor having been 
murdered by robbers on the road near Beth- 
horon, a body of soldiers was sent thither, 
who plundered all the villages in that neigh- 
bourhood, and made prisoners of the principal 
inhabitants. At this time one of the Roman 
soldiers seized a copy of the Pentateuch, and 
tore it in pieces before the people, with 
words of insult and blasphemy. On this the 
Jews repaired to Cajsarea to demand the 
punishment of the soldier ; and Cumanus, to 
put a stop to the growing excitement, ordered 
him to be beheaded. 

The reader of the Gospels is aware that 
the Jews of Galilee " must needs pass 
through Samaria" whenever they " went up 
to Jerusalem to worship." But as the 
Samaritans held that, not Jerusalem, but 
their own Mount Gerizim, was " the place 
where men ought to worship," they were 
much disposed to molest and insult the Jews 
who, at the time of the great festivals, passed 
through their country to Jerusalem. Soon 
after the transaction just recorded, one of 
the Galilean Jew3, thus journeying to wor- 

* The text of Josephus appears to be so much corrupted 
in its numbers, that it is open to conjecture that he wrote 
one thousand. It may, however, be well to remember 
what a prodigious multitude assembled at Jerusalem on 
such occasions. 



487 

ship at the temple, was murdered by the 
Samaritans. Justice being refused by Cu- 
manus, who had been bribed by the aggressors, 
several of the more disaffected J ews conspired 
together to take vengeance for the murder 
with their own hands. They effected this 
by placing themselves under the command 
of two celebrated robber chiefs, led by whom 
they began to ravage the villages of the 
Samaritans. But Cumanus came upon them 
with his troops, and slew many of them, and 
took the rest prisoners. This increased the 
ferment to the highest pitch. It extended 
to Jerusalem, where the principal men of 
the nation went about clad in sackcloth, and 
with ashes on their heads, entreating the 
people to remain quiet. But their efforts 
were only partially successful ; for many of 
the younger and less engaged members of 
the community, collected themselves into 
bands of robbers, and distressed the whole 
country by their depredations. The reader 
must remember that, as we have formerly 
intimated, the robbers of whom we read so 
much in this age, called themselves patriots ; 
that is to say, they made the profession of 
holy zeal against the dominion of the 
Romans, a cloak for their depredations 
against all who were suspected of being 
content to enjoy peace under the Romans. 
Ilence, as there were large bands of men, 
which collectively would have formed a 
large army, under the command of persons 
who, from their experience in operations 
which partook of a military character, were 
the only efficient leaders to which the dis- 
contented could look, it happened that all 
those who from warmth of temper or the 
force of circumstances were excited against 
the Romans, and against those who submitted 
to their rule — that is, to all the peaceable 
part of the nation — joined bands of robbers 
already existing, or formed new bands under 
old robber chiefs. This accounts for the 
immense numbers, the organised character, 
the large operations, and the peculiar pre- 
tensions of that portion of the Jewish popu- 
lation to which history gives the name of 
robbers, but to whom the term of guerillas 
would probably be now considered more 
applicable. 



THE EOMANS. 



488 

The Samaritans now, in their turn, went 
to Tyre to complain to the prefect of Syria 
(H. Quadratus) of these proceedings; and 
the Jews recriminated by stating the origin 
of the quarrel, and the refusal of justice by 
Cumanus, whom they charged with the 
acceptance of bribes from the Samaritans. 
Quadratus, on inquiry, was inclined to de- 
cide against the Samaritans ; but on becom- 
ing better acquainted with the part the 
Jews had taken in consequence, he turned 
against them, and treated them with great 
severity. In the end, however, he resolved 
to submit the whole affair to the emperor, 
and accordingly directed that some of the 
principal Jews and Samaritans should pro- 
ceed to Rome, whither also the procurator 
and his tribune Celer (whose conduct had 
been particularly offensive to the Jews) were 
ordered to repair. Agrippa, who was still at 
Rome, exerted himself with great earnest- 
ness on behalf of the Jews ; and the emperor 
did them justice. The principal Samaritans 
j he ordered to be executed, Cumanus was 
banished ; and as to Celer he was sent back 
to J erusalem, and was there dragged through 
the streets, and beheaded, by order of the 
emperor. This mode of pacifying people, by 
allowing them to slake that thirst of blood 
which has itself been created by the practice 
of rendering barbarous justice for barbarous 
wrong, was in that age much resorted to, 
and this history offers frequent examples of 
it. 52 A.n. 

It was about this time that Claudius gave 
to Agrippa the former tetrarchy of his uncle 
Philip, comprising Gaulonitis, Trachonitis, 
and Batanea, instead of the kingdom of 
Chalcis which he had before received. 
Agrippa, about this time also, gave his 
beautiful sister Drusilla in marriage to 
Azizus king of Emesa, who submitted to the 
rite of circumcision in order to obtain her. 

The new procurator of Judea was Claudius 
Felix, originally a slave, and afterwards a 
freedman of the emperor. It is an observa- 
tion at this day in the East, that no persons 
make such hard masters or rigid governors, 
as those who have themselves been slaves. 
So it was in the time of Felix, who ruled 
with all the tyranny ascribed to the despots 



[book v. 

of the East. It is true, however, that he 
found the country in a state which rendered 
strong measures necessary; but severe or 
tyrannous measures are not necessarily 
strong, although they are usually called j 
such. The whole country was infested by 
robbers, professed assassins, and banditti of 
the worst description. The embers of sedi- I 
tion were still alive in the bosoms of the j 
Gaulonitish party; and the imagination of 
the credulous multitude was kept in a state j 
of dangerous excitement by a succession of j 
daring impostors, who pretended to prophecy, | 
or to have received the divine commission to | 
deliver the nation from the Roman yoke. So 
numerous were they, that many of them ! 
were apprehended and executed almost j 
every day; the people also who followed j 
these deceivers were massacred by the j 
Roman troops without mercy. Felix, al- 
though he acted with vigour in putting 
down these incessant disorders as they } 
occurred, failed not to avail himself of the I 
occasions which they offered of gratifying I 
his avarice and his private resentments ; 
and even while putting down the assassins j 
with one hand, he hired their services with 
the other. If there was any man in Pales- j 
tine to whom Felix was under more obliga- 
tions than to another, it was to the high- 
priest Jonathan, who had greatly promoted 
his advancement to the distinguished post 
which he occupied. This venerable person 
he, however, caused to be murdered by the 
Sicarri, for no other cause than his frequent 
remonstrances with the governor about the 
acts of injustice and tyranny of which he 
was so often guilty. 

Agrippa, as we have seen, had married his 
sister to the king of Emesa, who was devotedly 
attached to her. But Felix, who already 
had two wives, saw her, and was so struck 
by her extraordinary beauty that he induced 
her to forsake her husband and to marry j 
him. When the nature and variety of this I 
man's offences are considered, it is not won- j 
derful that his guilty conscience was moved, j 
when the eloquent apostle, a prisoner before 
him " reasoned of righteousness, temperance i 
(chastity), and judgment to come." (Acts j 
xxiv. 25.) Ultimately the rule of Felix be- j 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



j OHAP. V.] 




[Nero.] 



came so intolerable to the Jews, that after 
he had misgoverned the province for ten 
years, they, in 59 a.d., sent a deputation to 
Rome, to complain of his conduct to the 
emperor. They obtained his recall ; and he 
was only screened from further punishment 
by the influence of his brother Pallas with 
Nero, who had succeeded Claudius in 54 a.d. 

Porcius Festus, the new procurator, was a 
much better man than his predecessor. He 
found Judea full of robbers, who devastated 
the country with fire and sword ; the Sicarri 
also were very daring and numerous. The 
priests of the different orders had also found 
or made causes of quarrel among themselves, 
and acts of great and disgraceful violence 
had become common. The occasion of this 
disturbance appears to have been afforded 
by the frequent depositions of the high- 
priests, and by their persisting to claim the 
pontifical tithes after their deposition, where- 
by, as the number of deposed high-priests 
was very considerable, the inferior priests 
were left without adequate maintenance. 
The rigour with which these tithes were 
exacted, and the obstinacy with which the 
claim was resisted, led to the most scanda- 
lous outrages. The respective parties, not 
content to assail each other by force of arms, 
hired robbers and assassins to espouse their 
cause, so that Jerusalem and the whole 
country was kept in a continual ferment, 
and the temple itself was sometimes stained 
with blood. Against all these parties Festus 
acted with much vigour, by which, and the 
severe examples which he made, some degree 
of quiet was temporarily restored. Agrippa 
had no concern in the affairs of Judea, but 



489 

such as arose from his being recognised as 
the principal person of the nation, and from 
his rule over the temple, and his power of 
appointing the high-priests. But these were 
circumstances of much importance. This is 
that king Agrippa, who, with Festus, heard 
Paul's defence at Cgesarea when the apostle 
declared his conviction that the king be- 
lieved the prophets; and, in reply to the 
declaration, " Almost thou persuadest me to 
be a Christian," replied, with that force and 
delicacy peculiar to him, " I would to God 
that thou .... were both almost and alto- 
gether such as I am — except these bonds.''' 

Festus died at the latter end of 62 a.d. 
The newly-appointed high-priest, Ananus, a 
proud Sadducee, took advantage of the in- 
terval between the death of one procurator 
and the arrival of another to call a council 
of the Jews, which, at his instigation, con- 
demned to death the Apostle James, the 
cousin of Jesus Christ, who had long pre- 
sided over the Christian church at Jerusalem, 
together with some other Christians, and 
stoned them to death. This act is mentioned 
by Josephus with much reprehension ; for it 
appears from him the apostle had won the 
respect of the more sober-minded Jews, whose 
representations to the new procurator Albi- 
nus (63 a.d.) produced an angry letter to the 
high-priest; and similar representations to 
Agrippa procured his removal from the 
high-priesthood. 

Albinus was a bad man, and thought only 
of turning his office to his own advantage. 
He indeed exerted himself to seize the rob- 
bers ; but he immediately released those 
from whom he could obtain money, and 
punished only such as were unable to gratify 
his avarice. The rich secured his favour by 
presents, and the turbulent among the 
people attached themselves to some one who 
was rich enough to protect them. In the 
end the robbers acquired perfect impunity ; 
for if a number of them were taken prisoners, 
they had only to seize some opulent person, 
whose friends, for his ransom, would pay the 
governor for the liberation of as many of the 
captured robbers as were required. Such 
was the operation of the practices of this 
procurator, that he acquired the reputation 



THE ROMANS. 



I 490 



THE . BIBLE HISTORY. 



BOOK V. 



of 



of being the real head of all the robber 
the country. 

It was during his administration that the 
Herodian temple was completely finished in 
all its parts. The prospect of throwing 
eighteen thousand men out of employment, 
seemed so dangerous, that various plans 
were considered for affording them work; 
and it was in the end decided by Agrippa to 
employ them in paring the city with white 
stone. This, however, did not last them 
long, or was discontinued : and in the time 
of the next procurator, they were thrown 
out of employment at a difficult crisis, the 
dangers of which they greatly aggravated, 
by joining themselves to the robber bands 
by which the country was devastated. 

Albinus was recalled in 64 a.d., and 
Gessius Florus appointed in his stead. This 
man was the last, and probably the very 
worst, Roman governor the Jews ever had. 
There is scarcely a crime of which Josephus 
does not accuse him: and all his crimes 
were committed openly, without concealment 
or shame. He oppressed the people by all 
kinds of rapine and extortion: pillaging 
whole districts, robbing the sacred treasury, 
and encouraging the plunder of the robbers 
for a share of the booty. Thus, instead of 
endeavouring to assuage the gathering storm, 
he did his utmost to hasten it on and to 
augment its rage, in the hope that the public 
confusion might prevent complaints against 
his iniquitous conduct from being heard, 
and that a wider field of plunder might be 
opened to him. He succeeded but too well. 
It is, however, idle to attribute the war 
which speedily ensued to the misgovernment 
of Florus. We have written the preceding 
pages in vain, if the reader does not perceive 
that the elements of this warfare against 
the Romans had existed long before,, and 
had been gathering such strength that the 
mutual strife could not long have been 
retarded had Gessius Florus never lived, or 
never governed in Judea, His proceedings 
may have hastened by a few years the pro- 
gress of events, or other measures might for 
a few years have checked their operation ; 
and that is all. 

The government of Florus became so in- 



tolerable that many of the Jews emigrated 
to foreign countries, being no longer able to 
endure the miseries they were doomed to 
suffer at home. 

Cestius Gallus, the president of Syria, 
attended at Jerusalem at the Passover in 65 
a.d. He was there surrounded by multitudes 
of Jews, who, while Florus stood laughing 
by, prayed him to have mercy upon the 
country. Cestius, instead of instituting 
proper inquiries into affairs, dismissed them 
with the promise that he would advise the 
procurator to govern more mildly in future. 
But this recommendation had no effect 
whatever on the plans and conduct of that 
unprincipled man. Cestius, struck by the 
immense concourse to Jerusalem at the 
Pas sover, endeavoured to form some notion 
of the numbers, by causing an estimate to 
be taken of the number of Paschal lambs 
which were slaughtered. This calculation 
was founded on the practice that not fewer 
than ten persons could sit down to eat the 
passover together. It is said to have been 
thus found that the Passover population of 
Jerusalem could not be less than two millions 
five hundred and fifty-six thousand, and 
might be three millions. One may at first 
view suspect these numbers to be a cipher 
too high ; but it must be borne in mind that 
it was imperative on every adult male to 
repair to Jerusalem at that season, and that 
devout J ews then resorted to the holy city 
from countries far beyond the limits of 
Palestine. 

There had been a quarrel of some standing 
between the Jews on one side, and the 
Greeks and Syrians on the other, respecting 
a claim of property to Cresarea. The Jews 
asserted that the city belonged to them, as 
it was built by their king Herod, and thev 
had been oppressed with taxes to pay for its 
buildings and its expensive mole : but it was 
contended on the . other side, that it had 
always been considered a Greek city, and 
that the intention of the founder was mani- 
fested by the numerous temples and statues 
he had erected there, in conformity with 
the usages and mythology of the Greeks, 
but utterly abhorrent to the Jews and to 
their religion. The matter was so hotly 



\ 



CHAP. V.] 

contested, that the parties had armed against 
each other in the time of Felix, who, how- 
ever, succeeded in allaying the ferment for 
a time, by persuading each party to send a 
deputation to plead the matter before Nero. 
Up to this time the result had remained in 
suspense; but now, at the worst possible 
time, the decision arrived in favour of the 
Syro-Greeks, who were thereby raised above 
the Jews, and became entitled to the first 
rank as citizens. This has been considered 
the signal of the war which almost imme- 
diately after broke out in every quarter; 
and it is rightly so considered, for the gross 
insults which the Jews and their religion 
now received from the heathen inhabitants 
of Csesarea, which insults were not avenged 
1 but aggravated by the governor, blew into a 
i devouring flame the embers of mortal strife, 
: which had been smouldering so long. That 
flame was soon extended to Jerusalem, by 
fresh insults from the procurator. In vain 
were all the efforts of the peaceably disposed 
among the Jews ; in vain were all the 
remonstrances of king Agrippa, who forcibly 
i represented the madness of opposing the 
conquerors of the world ; the sword was 
drawn, and the scabbard cast too far away 
to be found again. The peace-making king 
was compelled to withdraw from the city, 
and to take his part with the Romans, hoping 
to moderate the horrors of the war he could 
not stop. 

The refusal of Eleazer, the president of 
the temple, to offer the usual sacrifices in 
the temple for the prosperity of the Roman 
empire, may be taken as one of the marked 
points in this sad history, since it amounted 
to a renunciation of the national allegiance 
to the Romans, and as such was opposed by 
the earnest remonstrances of many of the 
chief priests and nobles. At Jerusalem, 
where the popular party greatly predomi- 
nated, the Roman garrison was put to the 
sword ; the palace of king Agrippa, and the 
public offices, were destroyed with fire; a 
son of Judas of Galilee, by name Menahem, ! 
made himself king in the city, and the bar- 
barities committed by him and his robbers ' 
added new aggravations to the horrors which 
raged within. The high-priest Ananus, who 



491 

had been driven to seek concealment in one 
of the aqueducts of the royal palace, was 
slaughtered by them, together with his 
brother Hezekiah. But the usurping king, 
with most of his adherents, was soon after 
cut off by the opposing faction of Eleazer. 

The example of Jerusalem gave such 
encouragement to the discontented, that the 
declared and open revolt was soon extended 
throughout the country. In everything that 
looked like a regular engagement, the Jews 
were constantly beaten by the Romans, but 
nothing could quench their fury or abate 
their indignation; and a scene of rapine, 
cruelty, and bloodshed opened, which ex- 
tended far beyond the limits of Palestine. 
Everywhere the popular party — now joined 
by the robbers, who took the name of Zealots, 
and who flocked in great numbers to take a 
leading part in the fray — massacred the 
Romans wherever they could master them, 
and plundered and devastated the cities and 
villages of the Syrians ; and neither Romans 
nor Syrians were slow or measured in their 
retaliations. In every city, whether occupied 
wholly or only in part by Jews, there were, 
so to speak, two hostile armies, which glared 
with deadly enmity on each other; and no 
man anywhere found safety but in the local 
predominance of the party to which he 
belonged, nor always then. The reader will 
not expect us to enter into the details of the 
atrocities and unmitigated horrors of this 
period. We must conscientiously abstain 
from taking any part in familiarising the 
mind with more than the general idea of — 
Blood — the life of man — poured out upon 
the ground like water, to be gathered up no 
more, and of atrocities which rend violently 
aside the veil, which, from all but the indi- 
vidual, should hide the mysteries of man's 
worst nature. The antiquarian and the 
scholar will always turn for these details to 
the original and authentic narrative of 
Josephus, which is easy of access, and which 
no secondary narrative can ever supersede*. 

Upon this general revolt of the Jews, 

* We of course speak exclusively of the 'Jewish War;' 
for which he is the original and sole authority: whereas for 
the history contained in the ' Antiquities,' we are familiar 
with the original authorities of nearly all the authentic 
information he supplies. 



THE ROMANS. 



492 



Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria, marched 
a powerful army into Palestine, which com- 
mitted great ravages on its way to Jerusalem. 
Cestius encamped before the city for three 
days, hoping that the display of his forces 
would intimidate the inhabitants into over- 
tures of peace. This result Agrippa, who 
was with Cestius, and the more peaceably 
disposed inhabitants of the city, endeavoured 
to bring about ; but finding the expectation 
hopeless, the Romans set fire, on the fourth 
day, to Bezetha, the northern suburb of the 
city. Josephus assures us that if they had 
then attacked the city itself, during the con- 
sternation of the seditious, they might easily 
have taken it, and have put an end to the 
war at once. "But," adds the historian, 
" for the wickedness of the people, God suf- 
fered not the war to come to an end at that 
time." In fact, Cestius was dissuaded from 
the course indicated by the emissaries of 
Florus, who was anxious to prolong the war, 
and by whom he was persuaded to withdraw 
from the city. This strange procedure em- 
boldened the previously panic-struck insur- 
gents, who sallied forth, pursued Cestius in 
his retreat, harassed, and finally routed his 
army with great slaughter on the 8th of 
November, 65 a.d. This victory supplied 
the Jews with many engines of war and 
arms, which afterwards enabled them to 
prolong the defence of the city. 

All thinking men among the Jews per- 
ceived that this victory would prove far 
more ruinons than any defeat which could 
have been sustained, being well assured that 
the Romans would not be content until 
rivers of blood had washed out the stain 
which their arms had incurred. The Chris- 
tians in Jerusalem clearly recognised the 
signs which Christ himself had long before 
pointed out, and, in obedience to his injunc- 
tions, they hastened to quit the devoted city. 
A great proportion of them withdrew to 
Pella, beyond Jordan, whence they could 
watch the progressive fulfilment of their 
Lord's predictions, without being themselves 
involved in the dread consequences. 

Cestius delayed not to send to the emperor 
an account of the disturbed state of Judea, 
and of the loss he had sustained, laying the 



[book 

whole blame upon Florus ; and soon after he 
died, either from disease or from chagrin. 
Nero was in Achaia when this intelligence 
reached him. He immediately sent into 
Syria with the quality of president, and 
committed the conduct of the war in Pales- 
tine to Vespasian, an able and experienced 
commander, who was then with him, and 
had lately returned with a high reputation 
from his victories in Germany and Britain. * 
His son, Titus, was at the same time sent to 
Alexandria, to conduct the fifth and tenth 
legions to the aid of his father. When he 
had been joined by these and by the auxi- 
liary forces of the tributary kings, Antiochus 
(Comagene), Agrippa, Sohem, and Malchus 
(Arabia), Vespasian found his army amounted 
to sixty thousand men. 

In the spring of 67 a.d. Vespasian led this 
great army from Ptolemais into Galilee. He 
recovered all the fortresses which the insur- 
gents possessed in that province, in particular 
Gadara and Jotapata, the last of which was 
defended by no less a person than Josephus, 
the J ewish historian of the war, a priest of 
Asamonean descent, who had, after the de- 
feat of Cestius, been appointed governor of 
Galilee by the provisional Jewish govern- 
ment. The place was defended with bravery 
and skill by the soldier-priest, but was in 
the end betrayed to the Romans. Josephus 
found refuge in a cavern, but was betrayed, 
and obliged to surrender. He was at first put 
in chains, but afterwards, when (as he says) 
he predicted that Vespasian would become 
emperor (then a very unlucky circumstance), 
he was treated with distinction and respect, 
especially after his prediction had been veri- 
fied by the event. Throughout Galilee the 
Roman troops ravaged and destroyed cities, 
towns, and villages, showing no mercy, at 
first, to age or sex, that the defeat of Cestius 
might be avenged. Vespasian next chas- 
tised the Samaritans. Then he invaded the 
fortresses of Joppa, Tarichasa, and Gamala. 
The last-named place, taking its name from 
the camel-like outlines of the cliffs on which 
it was situate, offered a most obstinate re- 
sistance ; enraged at which the Roman army 
massacred the inhabitants, and even slung 
the infants from the walls. Of all the in- 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



493 



habitants only two women survived ; for 
those who escaped the Romans destroyed 
themselves. 

Meanwhile the Jews in Jerusalem quar- 
relled among themselves, and the city was 
oppressed by three turbulent and conflicting 
factions. The first, under John, held posses- 
! sion of the lower city, containing the ancient 
quarter of Salem and Mount Acra, west- 
ward ; the second, under Eleazer, occupied 
the temple-quarter and Mount Moriah ; and 
the third was in the upper city, " the city of 
David," on Mount Zion, southward. These 
factions were ultimately reduced to two ; 
for at the last Passover, 70 a.d., John, under 
pretext of sacrificing in the temple, sent a 
band who destroyed Eleazer and his fac- 
tion, and possessed themselves of the temple- 
quarter. These factions, however they dis- 
agreed in other things, and wasted their 
strength in conflicts, agreed perfectly, from 
the beginning, in harassing, plundering, 
and massacring the nobles and richer in- 
habitants, as well as numbers cf the middle 
class who were peaceably disposed, and 
wished well to the Romans. To spite each 
other they also wantonly wasted the stores, 
and destroyed the storehouses containing 
corn, provisions, and other necessaries which 
might have enabled the city to sustain a 
siege of several years. But such are the 
suicidal acts of which the madness of faction 
is always guilty. 

Meanwhile Vespasian tarried quietly at 
Caesarea, giving rest and refreshment to his 
troops ; and when urged by his impatient 
officers to hasten his attack upon the city, 
he prudently refused, remarking, that " It 
was far better to let the Jews destroy one 
another." 

While he waited there were troubles at 
Rome. Nero, after a cruel and detested 
reign, which disgraced the promise of its 
commencement, destroyed himself, after hav- 
ing been condemned to death by the senate. 
Galba, Otho, Vitellius, followed in quick suc- 
| cession; and at length, contrary to all pre- 
vious grounds of calculation, Vespasian him- 
self was invested with the imperial purple 
by the legions in Judea. (July 3, 69 a.d.) 
Upon this the new emperor departed from 



Palestine to establish himself in Italy, leaving 
his son, Titus, to carry on the war. 




TTitus.] 



About the middle of April, the next year 
(70 a.d.), at the time of the Passover, when 
Jerusalem was, more even than ordinarily 
at that festival, thronged with people, Titus, 
with an army of sixty thousand Romans and 
auxiliaries, appeared before its walls. He 
probably made choice of this season with the 
view, that the immense number of useless 
persons, who would be shut up within the 
walls, might, by the vast consumption of 
provisions, the more speedily enable him to 
take by famine the city which strong forti- 
fications and a triple wall now rendered 
almost impregnable. Nor was this expecta- 
tion disappointed; for the miserable crowd 
had not long been shut up within the walls 
before famine, and its attendant pestilence, 
was experienced in forms so horrible, that 
no one, who has ever read the minute details 
contained in that history of the war which 
Josephus has given, forgets them as long 
as he lives. These we gladly pass over. 
Neither is it our intention to describe the 
operations of the siege, which can be of little 
interest, save to antiquarians and military 
men, and which may be found at large in 
the ample narrative of Josephus. It was the 
anxious wish of Titus to spare the city and 
its inhabitants ; but they were determined 
to defend it to the uttermost, or perish in it, 
vainly expecting that God would not allow 
his city and his temple to be overthrown. 
Alas, they were no longer His ! 

Throughout the siege, which lasted four 
months, Titus adopted the policy of Pompey, 
employing the Sabbath days in constructing 
military machines, raising mounts, under- 



494 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



[book V. 



mining the walls, without molestation, pre- 
vious to his attacks on the following Sundays. 
Having employed the Paschal week in mak- 
ing preparations, he made his first assault 
the day it ended, Sunday, April 22, 70 a.d. 
A breach in the first wall was made, and 
possession of a part of the lower city on 
Sunday, May 6 ; and the rest of it was taken 
in the ensuing week. In order to confine 
the multitude, and prevent their escaping, 
Titus found it necessary to build a wall of 
circumvallation all around the city, fortified 
with towers at regular intervals. This stu- 
pendous work was finished in three days, 
without molestation from the besieged, ad- 
vantage being taken of the Sabbath and 
two following days of " the feast of weeks," 
or Pentecost (June 2, 3, 4). The temple was 
burnt on Sunday, Aug. 5 ; and Titus, hav- 
ing prepared his machines on the Saturday 
(Sept. 1) for the attack of the upper city, 
took and destroyed it the day after, being 
Sunday, Sept. 2. 

It is remarkable to notice how Titus was 
driven against his will, through the desperate 
defence made by the besieged, and their ob- 
stinate refusal of every offer of mercy and 
compromise, to work out the intentions of 
Divine Providence, and fulfil the predictions 
of Christ, by the utter destruction of the 
city and temple of Jerusalem. The temple 
he was most anxious to save ; but in spite of 
his most earnest efforts, it was fired by the 
soldiers, and burned with inextinguishable 
fury until reduced to a mere heap of ruins. 
While the flames were raging, the soldiers 
lost no time in plundering the sacred fabric 
of its costly ornaments, and of its numerous 
vessels of silver and gold. Some of these, 
including the golden candelabrum, the table 
of shew-bread, and the silver trumpets, were 
displayed in the triumph of Vespasian and 
Titus, at Rome, and were figured on the 
triumphal arch erected on that occasion. 

A horrid massacre followed the taking of 
the city; for the Romans, instigated by their 
fury at the unwonted opposition, and by 
revenge for the losses they had sustained, 
put to the sword all who came in their way, 
without respect to age, sex, or condition. 
It has been calculated from the aggregate 



of the numbers given by Josephus that the 
number of the persons who perished, during 
this calamitous war, at Jerusalem and in 
other parts of the country, amounted to no 
less than one million three hundred and 
thirty-nine thousand. Then the captives 
were sold for slaves in prodigious numbers, 
until the slave-markets were so completely 
glutted that no one would buy them at any 
price. Large numbers of the least valuable 
were sent to work in the mines, or to labour 
on the public works of Egypt and other near 
countries. 

As to Jerusalem, the practice among the 
Orientals, with which the Roman soldiers 
were well acquainted, of burying money and 
valuables under ground in troublous times, 
induced the avaricious conquerors, after the 
capture of the city, to obey with alacrity the 
orders they had received to raze it to the 
ground. They even ploughed up the ground, 
in order to discover the hidden treasures. 
Thus was accomplished the old prophecy of 
Micah : — "Therefore shall Zion, for your sake, 
be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall 
become heaps, and the mountain of the house 
(the temple-mount) as the high places of the 
forest." 

From the point which we have reached, 
we pause a moment to cast one rapid glance 
upon the scene which lies before us. We 
behold the seed of Abraham, a sullen and 
solitary people, walking through the earth, 
as beings in it, indeed, but not of it : existing 
in all parts of the world, but finding no home 
in any of its continents and isles; crushed 
everywhere, but not broken; cast down, but 
not destroyed : despised, until they became 
despicable : depressed, until their hearts and 
character lost much of their expansiveness 
and wealth, and became small and poor. 
Never was there a race whom all men, dif- 
fering in all things else, have equally con- 
curred to hate, afflict, press down, destroy; 
never a race of whom all men have in the 
same degree concurred to doubt that they 
had human hearts. But they had them, al- 
though their genial feelings were not allowed 
to expand in the broad sunshine of the world 
beyond those thresholds which the foot of no 
stranger ever crossed. The garb by which, 



CHAP. V.] 



THE ROMANS. 



495 




Roman Medals, struck to commemorate the Conquest of Judea.] 



in the land of which they were once the lords, 
and in other eastern countries, they are ob- 
liged to distinguish themselves as an unpri- 
vileged race, is not now required in the coun- 
tries where the real distinction between them 
and the privileged inhabitants is the greatest. 
However much they may avail themselves of 
the appliances, and adapt themselves to the 
outward circumstances of high civilization, it 
is impossible not to perceive that they have 
themselves remained stationary in their prin- 



ciples and habits of conduct, but more, far 
more, in the habits and dispositions of their 
minds. We know not that the world ever 
offered so marked an instance of intellectual 
stagnation — petrifaction. Surely the Hebrew 
race is, in its mind and habits, as truly and 
purely the fragment of a former world, as are 
the dry bones of primitive creatures which, 
from time to time, men dig from the em- 
bedded rocks. The analogy is almost Scrip- 
tural ; and the Scriptural question forcibly 



1 496 

recurs — "Can these dry bones live V — " Lord 
God Thotj knowest ! " And what He knows 
He has thought fit dimly to reveal, and to 
open the partial prospect of the coming time 
when the dry bones shall start into activity 
of life, proportioned to the deepness of that 
death in which they have laid so long. But 
this is a matter on which we may not touch. 
The glimpses of hope and glory in the 
distant View, after the dreary and desolate 
regions through which we have passed, is 
beheld with feelings which can only be 



[book v. 

adequately intimated in the simile of the 
poet : — 

" As when a scout 

Through dark and desert ways with peril gone 
All night, at last, by break of cheerful dawn, 
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, 
Which to his eye discovers unaware 
The goodly prospect of some foreign land 
First seen, — or some renown'd metropolis 
With glist'ring spires and pinnacles adorn' d, 
Which now the rising sun gilds with his 
beams." — ^Iilton. 



THE BIBLE HISTORY. 



THE END 



INDEX 



A 

Aaron, the son of Amram 107; his miracles 

before Pharaoh 117; his difficulties 153, 154; 

his death and burial 159. 
Abdon, a judge of Israel 215. 
Abiathar, the high-priest 281 ; degraded from his 

functions 288. 
Abigail, her presents to David 250 ; becomes his 

wife 251 . 
Abijah, the prophet 318, 319. 
Abijah, king of Judah, his reign 329 ; his death 

331. 

Abimelech, king of Gerar, takes Abraham's wife 

to his harem 45 ; enters into a treaty with 

Abraham 47. 
Abimelech, son of Gideon, his daring spirit 209 ; 

slays his brother, and is anointed king 210; 

slain by a woman 211. 
Abishai 251. 

Abner 251; defeat of 256; reconciled to David 

257 ; murder of 258. 
Abraham, the times in which he lived 18; the 
youngest son of Terah of Mesopotamia 1 9 ; 
traditions respecting his early life 20 — 23; de- 
parts from Chaldea, and sojourns at Haran 23 ; 
the divine command delivered to him 24 ; 
departs for the land of Canaan 24 — 26; builds 
an alta to Jrehovah 26 ; a famine compels him 
to visit Egypt 28 ; represents his wife Sarah to 
be his sister ib. ; returns to Canaan 32 ; his 
great wealth ib.; encamps in the valley of 
Mamre 33, 37 ; defeats the Assyrian maraudei'3 
35 ; receives presents from Melchizedek 36 ; 
divine promises made to him 37 ; his concubine 
Agar bears a son 38 ; his wife Sarah conceives, 
and brings forth 46 ; he enters into a treaty 
with Abimelech 47, 48 ; trials of his faith 49"; 
prepares to sacrifice his own son 50 ; his wife 
dies 51 ; marries Returah, by whom he has sis 
sons 55 ; his death and burial ib. 
Absalom, the son of David 269 : slays Amnor 
270; his quarrels with his father 270—273; 
his death 274. 
Adoni-Zedeh, king of Jerusalem 180; his capture 
192. 

Adonijah, eldest son of David, concerts measures 
for securing the throne 280 ; his treasonable 
plot 287 ; is sentenced to death 288. 



Adoram, the collector of tribute 309. 

Agrippa, Ihe tetrarch of Judea 483 - r his adminis- 
tration 4S4 ; his death 485. 

Ahab, king of Israel, his reign 334; his death 
340 ; the seventy sons of decapitated 348. 

Ahaz, king of Judah, his reign 357 ; defeated by 
the Syrians ib.; his death 358. 

Ahaziah, king of Israel, his reign and death 340. 

Ahaziah, king of Judah, his death 347, 382. 

Ahimaaz, son of Zadok 275. 

Ahinoam, one of the wives of David 251. 

Ahithophel 273. 

Ai, Joshua's expedition against 178 ■ its de- 
struction 179. 

Albinus, the procurator of Judea 489. 

Alcimus, the high priest, expelled 437. 

Alexander of Macedon, his victorious career 407 
et seq. ; his visit to Jerusalem 408 ; dies at 
Babylon 411 ; distribution of his dominions ib. 

Alexander, the son of Aristobulus 458. 

Alexander Balas, his contentions with Demetrius 
Seta 441 ; is victorious 442. 

Alexander Jannseus, governor of Judsea, 451 ; his 
military operations 452, 453 ; death of 453. 

Alexander Zebinas, king of Syria 449. 

Alexandra, queen of Judea 453. 

Alexandrian Era 417. 

Altars, first dedication of 27. 

Amalekites, origin of the 12 ; resists the Israelites 
138 ; their incursions 204 ; defeat of the 238 •, I 
their king put to death 239. 

Amasa appointed captain of the host 277 ; slain 
by Joab ib. 

Amasis, king of Egypt 376. 

Amaziah, king of Judah, his reign 355 ; his 
death 356, 

Ammon, ruins of 267 ; temple of 409. 

Ammonites defeated by Jephthah 213; defeated 
by Abishai 267. 

Amnon, the son of David 269 ; violates his half- 
sister Tamar, and is slain by Absolom 269, 270. 

Amon, king of Judah, his reign and death 367 

Amorites, of Palestine 7, 8; defeated by the 
Israelites 161. 

Amosis, the first monarch of the Theban dynasty 
of Egypt 103. 

Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron 106, 107. 

Amraphel, king of Shinar 33. 



INDEX. 



Aniunoph I. Pharaoh of Egypt 108, 109. 
Ananus, tlie Sadducee 489. 
Angels visit Sodom, and are hospitably treated by 
Lot 42. 

Anthony. See Marc Anthony. 

Antigonus, general of Alexander, 411; his military 

operations and conquests 412. 413; is slain 415. 
Antigonus, son of Aristobulus king of Judea, put 

to death by Marc Antony 465. 
Antiochus Soter, son of Seleucus, and king of 

Syria 418. 
Antiochus Theos 418. 

Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, favours the 
Jews 424; his contests with the Romans 425; 
is slain 426. 

Antiochus Epiphanes 427 ; his contests with the 
Egyptians 429 et seq. ; his insane edict 431; 
his persecutions in Palestine 432 ; dies of a 
loathsome disease 435. 

Antiochus Eupator 435. 

Antiochus Sidetes 446. 

Antiochus Asiaticus 455 ; deposed by Pompey 456. 
Antipas the tetrarch 480. 

Antipater the Idumean, the actual governor of 
Judea 455, 458 ; appointed procurator of Judea 
460; put to death 477. 

Arab tribes 249. 

Arabia, traditions in, respecting Abraham's earlv 

life 22, 23. 
Arabian nation, Ishmael the founder of 56. 
Aradus, island of 5. 
Area, the Phoenician city of 5. 
Archers, representation of 234. 
Aridaeus, death of 412. 
Arioch, king of Ellasar 33 
Aristobulus, the governor of Judea 451, 455. 
Ark of God captured by the Philistines 222 ; 

restored by David 262. 
Arkites of Palestine 5, 6. 
Arpad, island of 5. 

Artaxerxes, king of Persia, his reign and cou quests 
397; his favours to the Jews 398; death of 
404. 

Artaxerxes II. his conquests 404 et seq. 

Arts promoted by Solomon 301 et seq. 

Arvadites of Palestine 5, 6. 

Asa, king of Judah, his reign 331 ; his death 333. 

Asahel 256. 

Asamoneans, noble family of the, 432 ; raised up 
as deliverers of the Jews ib.; history of the 
princes of, commencing with Judas Maccabeus 
437 et seq; last branch of destroyed by Herod 
470. 

Asher, tribe of 146, 168. 

Asia, pastoral tribes of 25. 

Asphaltic lake, of Palestine 8. 

Assyrians, early conquest of the 33, 34 ; defeated 
by the Canaanitish chiefs 35 ; make their first 
inroad into Syria 361 ; conquests of the 360; 
subdue the kingdoms of Israel 362 ; and of 
Judah 364; Assyrian forces struck dead by 
"the blast" 365. 



| Astrologers consulted by the Eastern kings 309. 
I Athaliah, possesses supreme power in Judah 352 ; 
her vengeful spirit 353 ; her death 354s 
Augustus (see Octanus) 469. 
Azariah, scribe of the temple 307. 
Azmaveth and others, manager of the crown 
property, 309. 

B 

Baal, the temple and worshippers of, destroyed by 

Jehu 348. 
Baal-peor, idolatry of 164. 
Baasha, king of Israel, his reign and death 326 
Babylon, capture of 385; Alexander arrives at 

where he dies 411. 
Balaam, the prophet 162 — 164 
Balak 162, 164. 

Balshazzar, his reign 384 et seq. 
Barak, defeats the'army of Sisera 202 
Bazillai of Gilead 276. 

Bathsheba, king David becomes enamoured of, and 
marries her 26S ; the mother of Solomon 269. 
Beersheba, Abraham dwells at 49. 
Bela, king of 33. 
Ben-Ammi, birth of 44. 

Benaiah, appointed to the chief militarY command 
288. 3 

Ben-hadad, king of Syria 339. 

Benjamin, tribe of 146, 168. 

Benjamites at war with the other tribes 195 ; 
their slaughter ib. 

Berenice, sister to the king of Egypt 419. 

Bethel, golden calf of 362. 

Bethuel, father of Rebekah 53. 

Bible, the leading points of its history — the first 
inhabitants of Palestine 1 — 16 ; its "chronology 
13 et seq.; the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, 17 — 64; the Hebrews in Egypt and the 
Wilderness 8 — 148 ; Joshua and the Judses 
176—220; the kingdom of Israel 232 et seq.; 
Saul elected king 232 ; David 254 ; Solomon 
286 ; the kingdoms of Israel and Judah 322 — 
362; the Captivity 377; the Restoration 389: 
events from 420 B.C. to 163 B.C., 403 ; the 
Asamonean princes 437 ; the Roman period 
458; birth of Jesus Christ 475 ; his crucifixion 
482 ; destruction of Jerusalem 491. 

Birsha, king of Gomorrah 33. 

Birth-right, on the privileges of 57. 

Blood, the water of the Nile turned into 119. 

Boaz and Ruth, stoiy of 199. 

Bondage of the Israelites in Egypt 100 et seq. 

Bora, king of Sodom 33. 

Buildings, public, erected by Solomon 298, 299. 
C 

Caligula, the Roman emperor 483 ; assassinated 
484. 

Canaan, history and social condition of the early 
inhabitants 1 et seq.; the various names and 
tribes of 4 ; Abraham arrives in 26 ; famines in 
the land 28, 57. 90; inhabitants of 152; on 



INDEX. 



the conquest of 170 ; Joshua's victorious career, 

and ultimate subjection of 175 et seq, (see Israel 

and Judea.) 
Captain of the host, office of S03. 
Captives, treatment of 193. 
Captivity, Babylonish, predicted by Jeremiah 371; 

details of the 377, 381 et seq. 
Carts, Egyptian 95. 
Cassius, the Roman general 459. 
Census of Israel 145, 146, 168; in David's reign 

279 ; of Judea under the Romans 478. 
Cestias Gallus, president of Syria 490. 
Chaldsea, the early inhabitants of 17 et seq. 
Chariots of Solomon 312. 

Chedorlaomer,king of Elam, subdues various tribes 

of Palestine 33. 
Cherith, brook of 335. 
Chimham 276. 

Chronology of the Bible, notes on the 13 et seq. ; 
that of Josephus adopted 14; great discre- 
pancies in 15. 

Claudius, the Roman emperor 484. 

Cleopatra, queen of Egypt 452 ; the leading events 
of her reign 462 et seq. ; visits Jerusalem 467. 

Commandments received on Mount Sinai 140. 

Commerce promoted by Solomon 302 et seq. 

Concubines of Solomon 313 — 316. 

Conquest of the Promised Land 170 et seq. 

Contracts, Era of the 413. 

Corn, winnowing and threshing of 200. 

Crassus, the proconsul of Rome 459. 

Crown property, managers of the 307 ; sources of 
316. 

Cumanus, the Roman procurator 486 ; his admi- 
nistration leads to fatal disturbances 487 et seq.; 
his banishment 488. 

Cushanrishthaim, king of Mesopotamia 196. 

Cyrenius, the Roman procurator 474, 478. 

Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians; his 
victorious career 387 ; his decree in favour of 
the Israelites 391 ; his death 395. 

D 

Daggers, Egyptian 197. 

Dagon, the god of the Philistines 223 ; temple of 

destroyed by Samson 219. 
Damacene-Svria, conquered by the Assyrians 363. 
Dan, tribe of 146, 148. 

Daniel, the prophet, carried into captivity 371 ; 
sent to Babylon 381 ; his wonderful career 382 
et seq. ; interprets the mysterious writing on 
the palace wall 385 ; saved from the lion's den 
386 ; the high respect in which he was held 388. 

Darius Hystaspes captures Babylon 385 ; favours 
the Jews, and rebuilds the temple 395, 396. 

Darius Nothus, death of 404. 

Darius III. his contests with Alexander 407, 410 

David, anointed by Samuel 240 ; introduced to 
Saul 241 ; slays Goliah 242 ; marries Saul's 
daughter 243 ; jealousy and animosity of Sau] 
243; exposed to the persecutions of Saul 244 . 



252 ; his love for Jonathan 245 ; his elegy on 
the death of Saul 255 ; he receives the crown of 
Israel ib.; his six wives 256 ; his contests with 
his rebellious son Absalom 270—273 ; the im- 
portant events, civil and military, of his reign 
259—279; his illness and death 280—282; 
his character 283 ; general review of his reign 
283—285. 

Deborah, the prophetess 202 ; song of 203, 204. 
Dedication, feast of 396. 

Deliverance of the Israelites from bondage, 155 
et seq. 

Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Syria, recovers 

Babylon 413 ; his contests 414 et seq. 
Demetrius Soter ascends the throne of Syria 438; 

his luxurious habits 441 ; events of his reign ; 

441 et seq.; is slain 442. 
Demetrius Nicator, king of Syria, his reign 443 I 

et seq.; his death 449. 
Doors of ancient temples 293. 
Dreams, interpretation of, by Joseph, 82, 84. 

E 

Edomites of Palestine 11, 12; resist the passage 
of the Israelites 159 ; their rebellion 352 ; de- 
feated by Amaziah 355. 

Eglon, king of Moab, assassinated 197. 

Egypt, com in 28 ; Abraham's visit to 28, 29; the 
then state of 29 — 31 ; manners and customs of 
82 et seq.; famine in 87 ; the Pharaohs of 103 ; 
plagues of 118 — 125 ; subdued by Nebuchad- 
nezzar 376 ; conquered by Alexander 409. 

Egyptians, their rigorous treatment of the Israelites 
105 et seq.; invade Judah 328 ; iuvade the 
Assyrians, and subdue Judah 369, 370 ; de- 
feated by Nebuchadnezzar 371. 

Ehud assassinates the king of the Moabites 197. 

Elah, king of Israel, his reign and death 326. 

Elath, taken from Judah 327. 

Eleazar. the priest, death of 191. 

Eleazar, the son of Mattathias 432. 

Eli, the high priest of Israel 220 et seq.; the 
wickedness and death of his sons 221; breaks 
his neck and dies 222. 

Eliezer, the servant of Abraham 52 ; negociates 
the marriage of Isaac 53 — 55. 

Elijah, the Tishbite, history of 334 et seq. ; his ; 
prophecy respecting Jezebel realized 347. 

Elisha, the successor of Elijah 337 ; his prophecies 
341 ; his history and miracles 342 — 346. 

Elon, a judge of Israel 215. 

Emim, the, of Palestine 11. 

Engeddi 248. 

Ephraim, tribe of 101 ; tribe of 145, 168. 
Ephraimites, defeat of the 215. 
Ephron, field of 51, 52. 

Esau, father of the Edomites 11 ; the son of Isaac 
55, 56 ; sells his birth-right 57 ; events of his 
life and contentions with his brother Jacob 
52—63. 

Evil Merodach, his reign 383. 



iv 



INDEX. 



Ezekiel, the prophet 376. 

Ezra, authorized to beautify the temple 398 ; his 
great reforms 399; revises the Scriptures 401, 
402. 

F 

Fadius, the tetrarch of Judea 486. 
Faith of Abraham 49, 50. 

Famines in the Jand of Canaan 28, 57, 89; in 
Egypt 87; in David's reign 278; in Judea 335, 
344, 486. 

Felix, Claudius, procurator of Judea 488. 
Festus, Porcius, procurator of Judea 489. 
First-born of Egypt destroyed 125. 
Florus, Gessius, the procurator of Judea, 490. 
Frogs, one of the plagues of Egypt 119. 

G 

Gaal, his vaunting and cowardice 210. 
Gabinius, the Roman proconsul 458, 459. 
Gad, tribe of 145, 168. 
Gath, David's visit to 252. 

Gedaliah, made governor of Judah, and murdered 
375. 

Genesis, book of, contains the early history of 

Palestine 4 et seq. 
Gerar, city of 44. 
Gibeah, wickedness of 1 94. 

Gibeonites enter into a treaty with Joshua 179 ; 

their vengeance against the house of Saul 278. 
Gideon of Manasseh, his victorious contests with 

the-Midianites, 205 — 208; his character and 

death 208, 209 ; his numerous family 209 ; 

history of Israel after his death 209 et seq. 
Gilgal, Israelitish encampment at 176. 
Girgashites of Palestine 8. 
Gnats, one of the plagues of Egypt 120. 
Golden calf, the 141, 142. 

Goliah, the giant of the Philistines 241 ; slain by 

David 242. 
Gosheu, laud of 96. 

II 

Hadad, king of the Syrians, defeated by David 
264. 

Hadad, the Edomite, his rebellion 319. 

Haran, Abraham arrives at 23. 

Harem of Solomon 313 — 316. 

Hazael, the Syrian, conquers Jerusalem 355. 

Hazeroth 150 

Hazor, city of, destroyed by Joshua 183. 

Heber, the Kenite 202. 

Hebrew, old, displaced by the Chaldee 401. 

Hebrew Scriptures, chronology of the 14, 15. 

Hebrews, history of the 1 et seq.; their persecuted 
condition in Egypt after the time of Joseph 105 
et seq.; and in the time of Moses 107 et seq., 
116 ; always governed by Jehovah 322, 323. 
(See Israelites and Jews.) 

Hebron, of Palestine 8. 



Herod 460, 461 ; the events of his reign 464 et 
seq.; his atrocities 469, 470 ; destroys the last 
branch of the Asamonean family 470 ; his inno- 
vations on the Jewish customs 470, 47 1 ; under- 
takes the restoration of the Jewish temple 472; 
puts Alexander and Aristobulus to death 474 ; 
dies of a loathsome disease 477 ; his will ib. 

Herod of Chalcis, death of 486. 

Heth, children of 6. 

Hadadezer, king of Zobah, defeated by David 264. 
Hagar, the bondmaid of Abraham, bears a son 38; 

fhes into the desert ib. ; leaves Abraham 47; is 

visited by an angel ib. 
Hail-storm, one of the plagues in Egypt 121, 122. 
Halah, numbers of Jews found there, in the 12th 

century 392. 
Hales, Dr., his chronological computations 13, 16. 
Ham, posterity of 1. 

Haman, his plot against the Jews defeated 399. 

Hamath, ancient city of 6. 

Hanun, king of Ammon 266. 

Haran, the son of Terah, his death 20. 

Hezekiah, king of Judah, his reign 362; death of 3 6 6 . 

High-priests of Israel 220. 

Hiram, king of Tyre, his alliance with David 265 ; 

congratulates Solomon 290. 
Hiram, the artificer of the temple 280. 
History, chronology of 14 et seq. 
Hikites of Hebron, 3, 4. 
Hittites of Palestine 9, 10. 
Hobab, the Midianite 147. 
Horites, in Seir, history of the 11, 12. 
Horses of Solomon 312. 

Hosea, king of Israel, his reign 361 ; carried into 

captivity 362. 
Hushai 273. 

Hyrcanus, son of Simon, 447 ; his victorious career 
448 et seq. ; his death 450 ; anecdote of 450 n. 

Hyrcanus II. son of queen Alexandra, succeeds to 
the government of Judea 454, 458 ; put to death 
468. 

I 

Ibzan, a judge of Israel 215. 
Ichabod, birth of 222. 

Idolatry, early state of, in Canaan 3 ; in Chaldsca 
IS, 19 ; Sabsean 26, 27 ; its prevalence after the 
time of Joshua 192 et seq. 215, 354; encouraged 
by Solomon 318. 

Isaac, birth of 46; offered by his father as a burnt- 
offering 49, 50; marries Rebekah 53; the events 
of his life 58 et seq.; his death 76. 

Ishmael, birth of 38; life of 47 ; his posterity and 
death 56 ; the founder of the Arabian nation ib. 

Ishmael, a prince of the royal family of Judah, 
murders Gedaliah 375. 

Ishbosheth, son of Saul, contends for the throne of 
Israel 255 ; assassinated 259. 

Isuael, the Judges of 191 et seq.; Othniel the 
first judge 196 ; Saul elected king 232 ; king- 
dom of becomes distinct from that of Judah 321 ; 



INDEX. 



list of the kings of, from Jeroboam to Hosea, 
322 ; history of, from 990 B.C. to 931, 322— 
327; from 931 B.C. to 895, 334—338; from 
895 B.C. to 719, 359 — 362 ; interregnums in 
360, 361 ; subdued by the Assyrians, and the 
people taken into captivity 362. (See Judah 
and Judea.) 

Israelites in the land of Goshen 96 (see Hebrews); 
history of their bondage iu Egypt 100 et seq. ; 
and of their deliverance 115 et seq. (see Moses) ; 
their departure from Egypt 126 ; they enter the 
wilderness of Sinai 134 ; their sufferings 135, 
136 ; resisted by the Amalekites 138 ; encamp 
before Mount Sinai 129 ; and receive the com- 
mand of the Lord 141 et seq. ; census of the 
twelve tribes 145, 146, 168 ; their wanderings 
143 et seq. ; their various contests with the in- 
habitants of Canaan 161 et seq. ; seduced by 
the Midianites 164, 165 ; contests between the 
tribes, 195 ; subjected to the Philistines 215, 
216; defeated by the Philistines 222; choose 
Saul for their king 227 — 228: census of in 
David's reign 279 ; their arts and commerce 
promoted by Solomon 302 et seq.; history of 
their captivity 377 et seq. ; and of their resto- 
ration 389 et seq.; favoured by Cyrus, Darius, 
and Artaxerxes 395 —398. 

Issachar, tribe of 145, 168. 

lzbi-benob, the Philistine giant 279. 

J 

Jabesh Gileal, beleaguered bv the Ammonites 
234. 

Jabin, kin? of Hazor, leasrues against the Israelites 
182; war with 202, 203. 

Jachimus, the high-priest 437. 

Jacob, the son of Isaac 55, 56 ; obtains the birth- 
right of Esau 57 ; events of his life, and con- 
tentions with his brother Esau 60 ; proceeds to 
Mesopotamia 64 ; meets with Rachel 65 ; de- 
ceived by Labau, and takes Leah to wife 66 ; 
marries Rachel ib.; his flight to Gilead 69 ; his 
| disputes with Laban 70 ; his fears of Esau 72, 
73 ; receives the name of " Israel" 73 ; arrives 
at Schechem, and builds an altar 74; his daughter 
Dinah 74 : arrives at Bethel 75 ; death of his 
wife Rachel 76 ; goes to Mamre ib.; loss of his 
beloved son Joseph 78 ; his sons visit Egypt to 
buy com, and discover their brother Joseph 94 ; 
departs for Egypt, where he is arTectionately re- 
ceived by Joseph 95 ; his death and burial 97, 98. 

Jael, assassinates Sisera 203. 

Jair, a judge of Israel 211. 

Japhet, history of his race a blank 1. 

Jason, the high priest, his schemes for subverting 
the ancient Jewish customs 427 ; his miserable 
death 430. 

Jebus, fortress of 261. 

Jebusites of Palestine 4, 7- 

Jehoahaz, king of Israel, his reign 359 ; his death 
360. 



Jehoahaz, king of Judah, his reign 370 : carried 

into captivity ib. 
Jehoiachin elected king of Judah, and deposed 373. 
Jehoiada, the high priest of Judah, saves Joash 

353 ; the guardian of the young king, and regent 

354. 

Jehoram, king of Israel, his reign, 340 : killed bv 
Jehu 347. 

Jehoram, king of Judah, his reign, 351 ; his death 
352. 

Jehosophat, the recorder 308. 
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, his reign 349 ; his 
death 351. 

Jehovah, Abraham builds an altar to 26, 27; always 

governed the Hebrews 322, 323. 
Jehu, anointed by Elisha as king of Israel 346 ; 

kills Jehoram 347 ; sacrifices the whole family 

of Ahab 348 ; destroys the temple and the 

worshippers of Baal 348 ; ascends the throne of 

Israel 359 ; his reign and death ib. 
Jephthah, a leader of the Israelites 212 ; defeats 

the Ammonites 213 ; sacrifices his daughter ib.; 

his death 215. 
Jeremiah, the prophet 371, 374, 375. 
Jericho, destruction of 177- 
Jeroboam, elevation of 318; chosen king by ten 

of the tribes 321 ; history of his reign 322 et 

seq.; his death 326. 
Jeroboam II. king of Israel, his reign and death 

360. 

Jerusalem, king of 180, 192; besieged by the 
Chaldeans 373, 374; captured and destroyed 
374 ; temple of restored 394 ; walls of rebuilt 
399, 400 ; visited by Ptolemy Lagus 412 ; 
Alexander's visit to 408 ; captured and de- 
stroyed by Titus 494. 

Jeshua, the Irish priest 396. 

Jesse, the father of David 240. 

Jesus Christ, birth of 475 ; baptized in Jordan 
482 ; his death ib. 

Jethro, the Midianite 146, 147- 

Jews, their traditions 15, 22. (See Judea, &c.) 

Jezebel, wickedness of 335 ; death of 347. 

Joab,his contestswith the Benjamites 256 ; assassi- 
nates Abner 258; his victorious career 267; 
displaced from command 277 ; slays Amasa the 
new captain ib.; slain by Benaiah 288. 

Joash, king of Judah, his concealment in the temple 
353 ; his reign 354 ; his death 355. 

Joash, king of Israel, his reign and death 360. 

Jochebed, the mother of Moses 107. 

John the Baptist, birth of 474; baptizes Christ 
482. 

Johoiakim, king of Judah, his reign 370 ; the 
calamities of his reign 371, 372 ; his death 373. 
Jonah, the prophet 360. 

Jonathan, the son of Saul, defeats the Philistines 

236; his love for David 245; slain by the 

Philistines 253. 
Jonathan, the brother of Judas Maccabams 439; 

elected governor 439; his victorious career 448; 

treacherously slain 444. 



vi 



INDEX. 



Jordan, the river 34, 175. 

Joseph, the son of Jacob and Raphael 77 : sold by 
his brethren 78; purchased asa slave byPotiphat 
80 ; resists the temptations of Potiphar's wife 
80; is cast into prison 81 ; interprets the dreams 
of Pharoah's chief butler and cook 82 ; inter- 
prets the dreams of Pharaoh 84 ; is made chief 
governor of Egypt ib.; provides against a 
lengthened famine 86 ; is visited by his brethren 
90 ; their affecting interviews 92*; declares his 
relationship 94 ; receives his father, and pro- 
vides for his brethren 95 ; his death and burial 
99 ; interval between his death and the birth of 
Moses 100. 

Josephus, his chronology of the Scriptures 14; 
adopted by the author of this work 16 ; an ex- 
cellent historian 22. 

Joshua, the military commander of the Israelites 
138; his career and conquests 175, 189; his 
military genius and character 1 78, 19 1 ; the sun 
and moon stand still at his command 180; his 
death 191 ; events from his death to the time 
of Samuel 191 et seq. 

Josiah, king of Judah, his reign 367; hit death 
369. 

Jotham, his parable against Abimelech 210. 

Jotham, king of Judah, his reign and death 357 

Judah, tribe of 145, 168; kingdom of, 321; be- 
comes distinct from that of Israel 322 et seq. ; 
list of the kiugs of, from Rehoboam to Zedekiah 
322; history of, from 990 b.c. to 929, 327— 
333; from 329 b.c. to 725, 349—358; from 
725 b.c. to 586, 362—376; invaded by the 
Egyptians 328 ; interregnum in 356 ; the men 
of defeated by the Syrians 357. (See Israelites.) 

Judas Maccabseus, chief governor of Judea, 437; 
his contests with Antiochus 433 et seq. • his 
death 439. 

Judea (see Israel and Judah); history of from 
420 b.c. to 163, 403—437; annexed to Coelo- 
Syna, and governed by high priests under 
Persian domination 403 et seq.; Alexander's 
visit to 408; subjected to the Ptolemies of 
Egypt, 412 et seq.; favoured by Antiochus 
424 ; ravaged by him 431; persecution of An- 
tiochus Epiphanes 432 ; relieved .by the fami- 
lies of the Asamoneans 432; the Syrian in- 
vaders defeated by the Maccabees 436 \ the rule 
of the Asamonean princes begins 437 ; Judas 
Maccabaeus the chief governor ib.; subjected to 
the Romans by Pompey 457; condition of under 
the Romans 460 et seq.; ruled by Herod 469 
etseq.; becomes a Roman province 474; the 
Roman decree of enrolment, ib. ; the advent of 
the promised Messiah 475 ; Roman census of 
478 ; political state of under the Romans 479 
et seq.; the Messiah rejected and crucified 482; 
"the veil of the temple rent" 483 ; contests of 
the Jews with the Roman soldiers 487 et seq. ; 
seditious disturbances in 491 ; Vespasian's in- 
vasion of 492 ; domestic factions of 493 ; Jeru- 
salem captured and destroyed by Titus, and the 



Jews annihilated as a nation 494; Roman medals 
struck to commemorate the conquest of 495 

Judges of Israel 191 et seq.; Othniel the first 
judge 196; nature of the office 230. 

J udgment, porch of 300. 

J ulius Cjesar, his contests with Pompey 460 j his 
assassination 461. 

K 

Kadmonites of Palestine 9, 10, 11. 

Kenizzites of Palestine 9. 

Keturah, the second wife of Abraham 55. 

Kings of Israel, commence with Saul 227. 

Kings of Judah and of Israel, lists of 322.' 

King's companion, office of 308. 

Korah, conspiracy of 154; his destruction 157. 

L 

Laban, the brother of Rebekah 53. 

Laban, father of Rachel 65. 

Land, division of among the tribes of Israel 185 

188, 189. 
Lebanon, trees of 290. 

Levi, tribe of, appointed to the care of the teraple 
296. 1 

Levites, the 194, 195. 

Locusts, one of the plagues in Egypt 123. 

Lot, the son of Haran 20 ; taken prisoner 34 ; 
entertains two angels 42 ; is saved from the 
destruction of Sodom 43 ; unknowingly cohabits 
with his daughters 44. 

Lysias, regent of Syria 434, 436 ; defeated bv the 
Jews 434, 436. 

M 

Machpelah, Abraham purchases the field of 51 ; 

where he is buried 55. 
Makkedah, cave of 181 ; the slaughter of the five 

kings at 182. 
Mamre, valley of 8, 33 ; the place where Abraham 

pitches his tent 33. 
Manasseh, tribe of 145, 168. 
Mauasseh, king of Judah, his reign 366 ; his death 

367. 

Manetho, fragments of 31. 

Manna sent from heaven 136. 

Marc Anthony, enthraUed by Cleopatra 462 ; his 

civil contests 462 et seq. ; defeated by Octavius 

467. 

Mariamne rejects Herod's love 468 ; and is put 

to death 469. 
Marcellus, procurator of Judea 483. 
Mattathias, the priest 432 ; resists the idolatrous 

orders of Antiochus 433 ; his death ib. 
Melchizedek, king of Salem 3 ; his hospitality to 

Abraham 36. 
Meleks, kings of Palestine 2. 
Memorial, stones of 176. 
Memphite dynasty of Egypt 103, 



INDEX. 



vii 



Menahem, king of Israel, his reign and death 
361. 

Menelaus, the brother of Jason 428; put to death 
437. 

Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan 266. 
Messiah, Jewish traditions as to the time of his 
coming 15; his advent 475; his crucifixion 482. 
Michah 194. 

Michal, the daughter of Saul, marries David 243. 
Midianites 162 et seq. ; their wars with the 

Israelites 165 ; their fatal contests with Gideon 

205—209. 
Milcah, the daughter of Haran 20. 
Miracles performed by Moses and Aaron 117 et 

seq., 157. 

Miriam, song of 133 ; her disputes with Moses 
150, 151 ; death of 158. 

Mithridates, king of Poutus 455. 

Mizpeh, assembly at 224. 

Moab, birth of 44 ; territories of 161. 

Moabites, origin of the 44 ; their political state 
162 et seq.; at war with Israel 196 et seq. 

Monumental pillars 176. 

Mordecai, uncle of queen Esther 399. 

Moses, the son of Amram, concealed in the bull- 
rushes, and discovered by Pharaoh's daughter 
107 ; brought up as her adopted son 109 ; he 
vindicates his persecuted brethren 110, 111 ; 
flies to Midian 111 ; and marries Zipporah ib. ; 
he receives the command of God to deliver his 
people 113, 114 ; revisits Egypt, and meets his 
brother Aaron 115 ; undertakes the deliverance 
of his brethren 117 et seq. ; his miracles 117 ; 
his plagues 118 — 125 ; leads the Israelites from 
Egypt 128 ; pufsued by Pharaoh, whose host 
perishes in the Red Sea 132 ; song of 133 ; 
sojourns in the wilderness 134; receives the 
commands of the Deity on Mount Sinai 139 et 
seq.; his wanderings and difficulties 148 et seq,; 
his contests with the Amorites, the Moabites, 
the Midianites, &c. 161 et seq.; his character 
and labours 169 ; his death 170. (See Israelites.) 

N 

Naaman, the leper 343 ; cured by Elisha 344. 
Nabal, his churlishness to David 250. 
Nabonadius 386. 

Nadab, king of Israel, his reign and death 326. 
Nahash, death of 266. 

Nahor, the son of Abraham 20 ; family of 53. 
Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth 198. 
Naphtalis, tribe of 146, 168. 
Nathan, the prophet, his reproof of David 268 ; 

promotes the accession of Solomon 280. 
Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, conquers 

the Egyptians and all Judaea 370, 37 1 ; his 

victorious career 373—376 ; his death 383. 
Nehemiah 399 ; his civil government of Judea 

400 et seq. 

Nero, the Roman emperor 489 ; his death 493. 
Nicanor, the Syrian, defeated 435. 



Nicolas of Damascus, his account of Josephus 
25. 

Nile, its waters converted into blood 119. 
O 

Obadiah, goodness of 335. 
Obed, grandfather of David 201. 
Obed, the prophet 357. 
Obelisks of an ancient temple 295. 
Ochus, king of Persia 406. 
Octavius of Rome receives the title of Augustus 
469. 

Og, king of Bashan 11 ; defeated and slain 161. 
Omri, king of Israel, his reign and death 327. 
Onias II. high priest of the Jews 420. 
Onias III. 426 ; deposed 427. 
Orpah, daughter of Naomi 198. 
Osirtasen I. Pharoah of Egypt 103. 
Othniel, the first judge of Israel 196 ; defeats the 
Me9opotamians ib. 

P 

Palace, office of the governor of the 310. 

Palaces of Solomon 301. 

Palanquin of the eastern nations 313. 

Palestine, first inhabitants of 1 et seq. ; number 
of small states in 2 ; the name derived from 
" Philistine " 13 ; note on the chronology of ib. ; 
state of at the time of Moses 158 ; conquest of 
170 et seq. (See Canaan and Judea.) 

Paran, wilderness of 249. 

Passover, first feast of the 124, 125 ; celebration 
of the 396 ; immense numbers assembled at 
the 490. 

Pastoral tribes of Asia, manners of the 25. 
Patriarchs, the first inhabitants of Palestine 1 et 

seq.; Abraham 17 ; Isaac 39 ; Jacob 64. 
Pekah, king of Israel, defeats Ahaz 357 ; his reign 

and death 361. 
Penuel, punishment of 208. 
Perdiccas, the general of Alexander, conspiracy 

against 411 ; slain 412. 
Perizzites of Palestine, the 4, 10. 
Persia, her conquests and extensive dominions 397 ; 

historical notices of, under Cyrus, Artaxerxes, 

and Darius 404 et seq. 
Pestilence sent upon Israel 279. 
Pharaoh, king of Egypt 29 ; sends for Joseph who 

interprets his dreams 83, 84 ; makes him chief 

governor of Egypt 85, 86 ; liberally provides 

for Joseph's father and brethren 95, 96. (See 

Joseph.) 

Pharaohs 103 ; their persecutions of the Israelites 
105 et seq. 

Pharaoh, a later king, his hardened opposition to 
Moses 117 et seq. ; of Egypt, his host perishes 
in the Red Sea 132. (See Moses.) 

Pharaoh-Necho, of Egypt, invades the Assyrians, 
and subdues the lrirgdom of Judah 369, 370. 

Pharisees, the 450, 452, 454. 



|«ai 



INDEX. 



Pheroras 474. 

Philip the tetrarcli 480; his death 483. 
PhiLppi, battle of 461 ; results of the 462. 
Philistines, their early history 13; their first 
attempts to bring the Southern tribes under sub- 
oo C ?° n 198 ; con( l uer the Israelites 215 216 
222 ; their cruel treatment of Samson 217 et 
seq. ; war declared against them by Saul 236 • 
their various contests 241-253 ; Saul defeated 
and slam 254; defeated by the Israelites 279 • 
their continued irruptions 352 et seq. 
Piuneas, the priest 191. 

Phoenicians, early tribes of the 5 ; subdued by the 

Assyrians 363. 
Plagues of Egypt 118—125. 
Polygamy, ancient practice of 251. 
Pompey, bis victorious career 455 et seq • his 
^ contests with Julius Cfesar 460. 
Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea 481 ; bis 
oppressive administration and banishment 483 
otl P hai :> the °fficer of Pharoah, purchases Joseph 
as a slave 80 ; elevates him ib. ; casts him into 
prison on the false charge of his wife 81 
Priests, twenty- classes of^appointed to the care 

of the temple 297. 
Prime minister, office of 308. 
t Procurators, Roman, of Judea 481 
Promised Land, the 148, 151, 169 ; subdued and 
possessed by the Israelites 170 et seq. (See 
Canaan, Judea, and Palestine.) 
Prophets consulted by the Hebrew kings 309- 

destruction of the 335. 
Provisions, collectors of 311. 
Ptolemies,, kings of Egypt 412—450 
Ptolemy Lagus 412; takes possession of Judea &c 

ib. ; bis contests 413. 
Ptolemy Soter 417. 
Ptolemy Philadelphia 417—418 
Ptolemy Euergetes 419, 420. 
Ptolemy Philopator 421. 
Ptolemy Epipbanes 424. 

Ptolemy Philometor, and Ptolemy Euero-etes II 

their contests witb Antiochus 429 430 
Ptolemy Physicon, death of 450. 
Pul, king of Assyria 358, 361. 
Purim, feast of 399. 



Quails sent from heaven 135. 
Queen of king Solomon 315. 

R 

Kabbah, city of 267 ; captured by David 269 
Pebekah daughter of Bethuel'53 ; married to 

xsaac 5i) ; brings forth twins ib. 
Recorder, office of 308. 
Rezin, the Edomite. his rebellion 319 
Rezin king of Syria, defeats the men of Judah 

oo7. 

Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon 320 • 



his arbitrary disposition, and revolt often tribe. 
321; supported by the tribes of Judah and 
Benjamin ib. ; his reign 327 et seq.; his wicked- 
ness and misfortunes 328 ; his death 329 
Religious service, first act of, in patriarchal history 

Remnant of Israel, history of its preservation and 

restoration 390 et seq. 
Rephaim, the, of Palestine 10, 11, 
Restoration of the Israelites from captivity 389 

et seq. 

Reuben, tribe of 145, 168. 

Revenue, sources of 309, 310. 

Romans, rising power of the 424, 438 • their 
contests with Antiochus 425 ; their contests with 
-Uithndates 455; their victorious career and 
numerous conquests 456, 458 et seq : civil 
wars of the 460 et seq.; reduce Judea to a pro- 
vince 4, 2; their various conflicts witb the 
Jewish populace 487 et seq.; capture Jerusalem 
and annihilate the nationality of the Jews 494 • 
theft medals to celebrate the conquests of Judea 

Royal chancellors, office of 308. 
Puth, story of 198. 



Sabaean idolators 26, 27. 
Sacrifices offered in the temple 298. 
Sadducees, the 450, 552. 
Salem, Melchizedek king of 3. 
Samaria, captured and destroyed by the Assyrians 

ob2 ; seige and destruction of 450. 
Samaritan Pentateuch, chronology of the 14 15 
Samaritans, restore the true worship 362 /con- 
quered by Alexander 409; their complaints 

Samuel, the Levite, Jehovah's communication to 
ML ; succeeds Eli to the priesthood 2 9 4 • his 
zeal against idolatry 224; his administration 
<t2o ; selects Saul for king of Israel 2^9 • hi* 
authority still continued 23S ; his disputes 'with 
Saul 239 ; anoints David 240 ; death of 219 
Samson, birth of 216 ; his extraordinary strength 
Jb.; his riddle ib. ; his contests with the Philis- 
tines, and his wonderful fetes 217 et seq • de 
P riv ?d of his sight 219; destroys himself and 
the Philistines in the temple of Da^on 219 
Sarah, or Sarai, the wife of Abraham 20 ; visits 
Egypt 28 ; Abraham's fears respecting 28 • re- 
presents herself as the sister of Abraham 2« ■ 
taken to the house of Pharoah 29 ; sterility of 
38; her future maternity predicted 41 ; pre- 
tends to be the sister of Abraham, and is taken 
toAbimelech'sharem45; conceives, and brings 
forth Isaac 46; death of 51. 
Sarepta, widow of 335. 

Saul chosen king of Israel 227—258 ; his duties 
and privileges prescribed 232, 233 ; marches to 
the defence of Jabesh Gilead, and defeats the 
Ammonites 234; declares war against thePhilis- 



INDEX. 



tines 236 ; assumes the priestly functions, and 
is deserted by his forces 237 ; his various ex- 
peditions against his enemies 238 et seq. ; his dis- 
putes with Samuel 239 ; labouring under meu- 
tal malady he sends for David 241 ; the various 
events of his reign, and his persecutions of 
David 241—253; is finally defeated by the 
Philistines and slain 254 ; David's elegy on his 
death 255. 

Schechem, punishment of 211 ; made the metro- 
polis of Israel 323= 
Scribes of the temple 307. 

Scriptures, on the chronologv of the 14, 15 ; re- 
vised by Ezra 401. (See Bible.) 
Seleucidaj* Era of the 413. 

Seleucus Nicator, king of Syria, his conquests 413 
et seq. 

Seleucus Callinicus 419, 420. 
Seleucus Keraunus, murder of 422. 
Seleucus Philopator, son of Antiochus the Great 
426. 

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, subdues the kingdom 
of Judah 36 1; his blasphemies 365 ; is slain ib. 

Septuagint, chronology of the 14, 15. 

Serbal, mount 137. 

Sextus Caesar assassinated 461. 

Shallum, king of Israel, his reign and death 360, 
361. 

Shalmanezer, subdues the kingdom of Israel 362 ; 

his death 363. 
Shamgar 198. 

Sheba, hostilities against 277 ; the queen of, visits 
king Solomon 317 ; her presents 318. 

Shem, descendants of 1. 

Shember, king of Zeboim 33. 

Sheva, scribe of the temple 307. 

Shiloh, tabernacle of 187. 

Sbimei, 273, 276 ; put to death 288. 

Shinab, king of Admah 33. 

Shishak, the Egyptian king, invades and despoils 
Judah 328. 

Shunemite, the 342. 

Siddim, fertile vale of 2, 8, 34; different petty 

states in 3. 
Sidon, the father of the Sidonians 5. 
Signet-rings of Egypt 85. 

Sihon, king of the Amorites, defeated and slain 
161. 

Simeon, the tribe of 145, 168. 

Simon the Just, 417 ; the last of " the great 

synagogue" 421. 
Simon II. the high priest 426. 
Simon, the brother of Jonathan, succeeds as 

governor of Judea 444 ; his vigorous measures 

445. 

Sin, ancient city of 5. 

Sinai, wilderness of, entered by tbe Israelites 134. 
Sinai, mount, Moses here communicates with the 

Deity 137 et seq. 
Sinites of Palestine 5, 6. 
Sisera, defeat of 202; assassinated 203. 
Sitting, ancient modes of 264. 
L . 



Sodom, visited by angels 42; its destruction 43. 

Sohemus put to death 468. 

Solohon, the son of Bathsheba, his birth 269 ; 
anointed as king of Israel during his father's 
life 280, 281 ; ascends the throne 286 ; state of 
the kingdom on his accession ib. ; conspiracies 
against 287 ; marries a daughter of Pharoah 
288 ; restores public worship 289 ; his choice 
of "AYisdom" ib ; his celebrated judgment ib.; 
builds a magnificent temple 290—295 ; erects 
various public buildings 298, 299 ; his porch 
of judgment 300 ; his throne ib. ; his palace 301 ; 
the promoter of arts and commerce 301 et seq.; 
his high officers of state 308 ; his household 
expenses 311 et seq. ; song of 312; his harem 
313—316 ; visited by the queen of Sheba 317 ; 
an encourager of idolatry 318; his death 320; 
the magnificence and profusion of his reign ib.; 
his son Rehoboam his successor ib. 

Song of Solomon 312. 

Succoth, punishment of 208. 

Syria, invaded bv Alexander 408. 

Syrians defeated'by David 264, 267 ; their defeat 
and flight 345 ; defeat the men of Judah 357 ; 
worsted by Judas Maccabeus 434. (See Antio- 
chus.) 

T 

Tabernacle, building of the 143, 144 ; set up at 
Shiloh 187 ; prepared by David 262. 

Tamar, violated by Amnon 269. 

Temple of Jerusalem built by Solomon 290, 291 ; 
number of workmen employed 291; its great 
magnificence 292 — 295 ; tribe of Levi appointed 
to the 296 ; its dedication 297 ; sacrifices offered 
298 ; rebuilt under Darius 396; its restoration 
undertaken by Herod 472. 

Temples, ancient, doors and windows of 295. 

Terah, the father of Abraham 19. 

Tetrarchies of Judea 480. 

Thebe's dynasty of Egypt 183. 

Theocracy of Israel, terminated with the election 
of Saul 232. 

Thermuthis, the daughter of Pharoah 207. 

Theudas, the impostor 486. 

Tiberius, the Roman emperor 480. 

Tidal, king of Goim 33. 

Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, 358. 

Tigranes, the Armenian king 454. 

Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia 365. 

Titus besieges Jerusalem 493; and takes it by 
storm 494. 

Tobial, the Ammonite 402. 

Tala, a judge of Israel 211. 

Traditions respecting the early life of Abraham 20, 
21. 

Tribes of Israel 145, 146, 168; division of lands 
among the 185, 188, 189 ; at war with each 
other 195. 

Tribute, the collector of 309. 

Tryphon treacherously slays Jonathan 444. 



Tyre oesieged by the Assyrians 363; subdued bv 
Nebuchadnezzar 376,- captured by Alexander 

Tyrians, employed by Solomon 290. 

U 

Umbrella, ancient use of the 316 

uSJ^Z C ^ eeS i tte f^-P^ of Abraham 19. 
Lriah the husband of Bathsheba, his death 268. 
U.ner, Archbishop, his chronology of the Bible 

IWk king of Judah,his reign 356 ; his death 357, 



Vespasian marches troops into Judea 429; elected 
emperor, and assigns command to his son Titus 

VitelKus, president of Syria 483. 

W 

Wanderings of the Israelites 148 et seq 
War cruelties of, in ancient times 166 
Wells, their importance in the East 48 49- dis 
putes between Abraham and Abimelech respect- 
ing 48; Isaac's contentions relative to 58 
Wilderness, wanderings of the Israelites in the 
14b et seq. 



Windows of an ancient temple 295 

Wine-cups of Egypt 93. 

Wives of Solomon 313, 316 

Women, Israelitish law respecting their property 

World, on the age of the 14 15 

Worship, public, restored by Solomon 289. 



X 



Xerxes, king of Persia, his rei-n 



gn 397. 



Zachariah, king of Israel, his reign and death 360 
Zadok, the priest 280. 
Zamzummim, the, of Palestine 11 
Zebulon, tribe of 145, 158. 
Zechariah, prophecies of 395 
Zedekiah, king of Judah, his reign 373; carried 
into captivity 374. eQ 
Zelophehad, the five 'daughters of 186 
Zemarites, of Palestine 5 6 
Zerubbabel 3SS; appointed conductor of the 

Zibn 273 ^c' 3935 MS d ° ath 3% - 

Ziklag, destruction of 252. 
Ziph, wilderness of 248. 
Zipporah, the wife of Moses 111 
Zuzim of Palestine 11. 



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